The Draconequus with the Dragon Tattoo
by A. M. Shark
Summary: Ten years ago Applejack disappeared without a trace. Now it's up to Fluttershy to find out why, but will that be possible when she's thrown together with a pierced, tattooed, reality-bending draconequus who's just recently escaped being trapped in stone? AU Fluttercord based loosely on the plot from the Stieg Larsson novel. Constructive Criticism Welcome.
1. Prologue

**Summary: Ten years ago Applejack disappeared without a trace. Now it's up to Fluttershy to find out why, but will that be possible when she's thrown together with a pierced, tattooed, reality-bending draconequus who's just recently escaped being trapped in stone and can literally turn her world upside down? AU. Inspired by Fluttershy and Discord's relationship both in the show and in several fanfics, and based loosely on the plot from "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. Construction criticism welcome.**

* * *

Prologue

The old earth pony gazed out of her bedroom window at the farm's apple orchard. She could see a large red stallion and a young pale yellow mare hurrying from the barn to the orchard with empty baskets, loading them up with apples, and bringing them back to the barn. The old pony would have been out there helping them, but the colder weather had been making her joints hurt worse than usual.

She sighed as she continued to watch her grandchildren work. Even after all this time it didn't look right to see just the two of them working out there without their middle sibling. She would have felt better if the farm had still been under Applejack's care. While Applebloom and Big Macintosh were both hard workers, neither of them had quite the drive Applejack had had when it came to running the farm...

She shook her head. It was no use thinking like that; wishing for what could have been. The dull ache in her back legs had been growing steadily worse and now it was roaring, begging her to go lie down. She turned from the window and moved slowly toward her bed. She was almost there when one of her front hooves bumped something that fell to the floor with a clunk and a rustle. Looking down, she felt an ache in her heart that for once wasn't a physical one.

The something she had bumped was a corked and sealed bottle of cider. Tied to its neck was a bunch of rosebuds made out of dried apple peelings. A casual observer might have thought it a pretty gift but the sight of it only made Granny Smith shudder. Not wanting to see it any longer, she picked it up in her mouth and made her way to the closet. Nudging the door open, she was greeted with the sight of even more cider bottles. The little bunches of dried apple rosebuds had shriveled, crumpled and fallen off most of them but other than that they were identical to the one she now held. She set the new bottle down among the others and just stood there for several seconds, looking at them. One of those bottles had been delivered to the farm every year, ever since...

For the first time in a long while she found herself counting the bottles. There were ten of them.

Ten bottles.

Ten years.

Ten years since Applejack had vanished from her family's life without a trace.

* * *

**Stop the presses! MLP has managed to get the Shark to write a piece of fanfiction! Something no other fandom has accomplished! Yes, I've read my share of fanfiction but I've never attempted to write any before. I've always been too afraid that I might make the characters out-of-character, and as I regard out-of-characterness to be the Ultimate Fanfic Writer's Sin, you can probably see why I was a bit hesitant to risk committing it. But then this idea came to me and wouldn't leave. It's been bouncing about in my head to the point where I can't concentrate on my own original fiction. So I've decided to finally throw up the sponge, give in, and write this sucker down if only to get it out of my system.**

**Admittedly I don't even know if this idea is going to work. It will probably go down like the Titanic but let's see what happens.**

**Note: I came up with this idea back before Season 4 was out (Yeah, it's been festering in my brain that long.) so it goes the alternate universe route similar to "Bride of Discord". Think the first three seasons, minus the Discord episodes, than jump ahead ten years. Also I'm going with the idea that the Mane 6 are mentally in their twenties in the original series, putting them mentally in their thirties for this story.**


	2. Chapter 1

"_Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." –James 1:2-3_

* * *

Winter was on its way in Equestria, ponies were gearing up to stay indoors, and in Ponyville Fluttershy's name was currently worse than mud.

"I'm not sure what happened," Fluttershy sighed. She was currently standing in Carousel Boutique, confiding her problems to Rarity as the white unicorn worked on a new dress design.

"What do you mean, darling?" Rarity asked, pausing in her work to peer at Fluttershy over her work glasses.

Fluttershy drew a deep breath and plunged into the story of how she had ended up in her current less-than-pleasant situation. She had been tending to her animals, helping them get ready for winter when the animals all seemed to go crazy. They had stampeded into Ponyville and gotten into the supplies in the market stalls. She had tried to stop them, but they hadn't listened to her. It had taken most of the citizens of Ponyville to drive the animals away. Since she had been taking care of the animals, the town had blamed Fluttershy for the accident, and she'd had to give away almost all her money to pay for the damages.

"End now I'm all out of bits, and everypony is still mad at me," she concluded. 

"Ooh, bummer," said a new voice, startling both Fluttershy and Rarity. They turned to see Pinkie Pie bouncing across the room, a bakery box balanced on her head. Neither of them had heard her come in. How the box didn't fly off her head as she bounced was a mystery they had long given up trying to solve. She landed between them and with a quick little jerk of her head the box's lid flipped open. 

"Cupcake?" she asked, lowering her head so that the box slid smoothly off and landed right-side up on the floor.

"Oh, don't mind if I do," said Rarity, using her magic to levitate a cupcake from the box.

Pinkie selected two cupcakes from the box, tossed one into her mouth and held the other one out to Fluttershy.

"Thanks, but I'm not really hungry right now," said Fluttershy.

Pinkie set the cupcake down and threw her forelegs around Fluttershy's neck, pulling her into a tight hug. "Don't worry about everypony in Ponyville. Just give them some time to cool down. They'll come around soon enough."

"I suppose so," Fluttershy said doubtfully, partly because she wasn't so sure the advice would work, and partly because she wouldn't have expected this sort of advice from Pinkie. She would have expected the energetic earth pony to suggest she race all over Ponyville apologizing non-stop to everypony she saw. Then again, Pinkie had mellowed a tad ever since Applejack's disappearance. She was still her fun-loving self, but there were times when she seemed to become oddly quiet and contemplative.

Pinkie gave Fluttershy an extra tight squeeze, lifting the pegasus off her front hooves in the process. "Just wait until they need somepony to handle the animals again and they'll suddenly become your biggest fans," she chirped before releasing Fluttershy, picking up the cupcake box and bouncing out of the boutique, evidently feeling her job there was done.

When Pinkie glanced over shoulder, Fluttershy gave her a small smile of thanks. However that smile disappeared as soon as the pink pony did. The trouble with the ponies needing someone to take care of the animals was that the animals in question wouldn't be out of their hideouts until winter was over. Fluttershy's heart sank even lower at the thought of having to wait that long before getting back on Ponyville's good side.

Her musing on these depressing thoughts was interrupted when the bell above the front door jingled. She and Rarity looked up again to see a young pale yellow earth pony trotting up to them. On her hindquarters were clusters of pink-and-white apple blossoms, some of them no more than buds, some of them just beginning to open, but most of them with their petals fully spread.

"Sorry I'm late, Rarity," she panted with a southern accent. "Harvesting the apples took longer than I thought."

Rarity waved a hoof dismissively. "Oh, don't worry about it, dear."

Anytime Fluttershy saw one of the former Cutie Mark Crusaders, it amazed her how fast time had gone by. It seemed like just a few days ago she had been foal-sitting them, but there was no denying that the three fillies had now grown into young mares. As fillies they had seldom been apart, constantly trying to earn their cutie marks, but now that they'd finally gotten them, the three seemed to have drifted apart. Oh, they were still friends, but their different talents had led them to pursue different interests and they didn't get together as often as they had when they were younger.

Now as Fluttershy watched Applebloom and Rarity, she felt a familiar mixture of amusement and sorrow; amusement as she tried to imagine Applejack's reaction to the fact that her little sister had begun to take after Rarity in fashion sense (that she'd actually earned her cutie mark helping Rarity), and sorrow that the orange earth pony had missed seeing her little sister grow-up.

Fluttershy could still remember when she and the rest of her friends had gotten the news that Applejack was missing. It had been the day after the Apple Family Reunion. Applejack had been seen at the reunion, but there had been so many relatives there it would have been quite easy to get lost in a crowd. Her siblings and grandmother had assumed she was off with other family members when they couldn't seem to find her. It wasn't until that great crowd of relatives had left that they realized Applejack was gone as well. They had contacted their relatives to see if Applejack had left with them by mistake, but everypony had claimed that they hadn't seen her since leaving the reunion.

After several days had gone by with no word from Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Twilight, and Spike had spent months traveling Equestria, showing pictures of her to everypony they met, asking if they'd seen her, but their search had been fruitless. Applejack had disappeared once before after a Canterlot Rodeo Show, but that time her friends had managed to find her. This time after searching for over a year with no results they had been forced to give up their search.

In the ten years since then, much to many ponies' surprise, Apple Bloom had gravitated toward Rarity as a sort of substitute older sister and now she balanced her work on the farm with working as Rarity's assistant.

Fluttershy's thoughts were interrupted yet again when the bell above the boutique's door jingled again. The ponies looked up to see Granny Smith walking in.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, I wanted Granny Smith to see some of my designs," said Apple Bloom.

While Rarity and Apple Bloom talked and worked on several designs, Fluttershy stood there, letting them drape her in several different dress designs, and letting her mind drift back to the animal stampede that had turned Ponyville against her. When she had questioned the animals about what had led to their rampage, they had told her they couldn't explain why they had done what they'd done. All they could tell her besides that was that a huge storm was coming.

"Is something wrong, Fluttershy?" Apple Bloom asked suddenly.

"Hm? Oh, well … I …" Fluttershy fumbled for an answer before Rarity came to her rescue and explained the situation to her assistant.

"And now I don't know how I'm going to get the supplies I need," Fluttershy added, once Rarity had finished the story.

"If that's the case, why don't you stay at our farm," Granny Smith called out from the other side of the room. "We've got enough supplies for a few extra ponies."

"Oh, I wouldn't want to impose—"

"You wouldn't. We've got a little cabin in an abandoned part of the orchard. You can stay there if you want privacy."

Fluttershy thought about it. It might be a good idea to get away from Ponyville for a bit. Maybe the time away would help her find a way to restore her reputation. "Okay," she said. 

* * *

It was late in the afternoon in Canterlot and the princesses Celestia and Luna were walking through the Canterlot gardens. A casual observer might have assumed that they were just taking a stroll, visiting with each other as most sisters did. But on closer examination, that observer might have noticed a certain tenseness in their movements that they couldn't quite disguise. As they moved through the sculpture garden this tenseness became even more pronounced. Finally they reached their destination: one of the statues.

This was a creature known as a draconequus. Its head was similar to a pony's but its long, snake-like body had the limbs of several different animals. Over the centuries the many gardeners and landscapers that had worked in the gardens had almost always agreed on one thing, and it was that this particular statue was an eyesore among the otherwise pleasing array of figures. Celestia had just endured their fuming and refused to put the statue in storage. She had decided long ago to keep the statue outside where it could easily be seen because it was not just any old statue. Sealed inside it was her old enemy Discord. Imprisoning him had been a task neither Celestia nor Luna had enjoyed but they had had little choice in the matter. When free Discord had had the ability to wrap reality as he chose, and this couple with the fact that he had viewed Equestria and its inhabitants as nothing more than toys put there for his brand of mean-spirited entertainment had been a dangerous combination. He had bucked every attempt to reign him in and finally in a last desperate attempt to spare their land and their subjects from his antics, Celestia and Luna had used the Elements of Harmony to turn him to stone.

When the Elements had chosen new bearers, Celestia had feared the spell imprisoning Discord would break and he might be free again. But that had been over a decade ago and his statue still showed no sign of cracking. Still it was better to be safe than sorry and the two royal sisters continued to regularly check on the statue.

Now they spread their wings and flew up to the statue, checking it from every angle. As they circled its head, they looked at its frozen stone face. Even the piercings in its ears, nose, and eyebrows had been turned to stone. In a few places the stone hinted at the texture of Discord's feathers, fur, and scales, but it showed nothing of the various tattoos that had covered much of his bizarre body. The only one Celestia could remember very clearly was a large one of a dragon that slithered up the back of his neck and coiled around and around his long body. How the tattoo had shown through his fur, she didn't know but she'd found that trying to make sense of most of the things the draconequus had been able to do just resulted in a headache. The strangeness of his tattoos were actually among his more milder oddities.

Finishing their inspection and discovering no cracks, Celestia and Luna exchanged relived looks.

"The spell still holds," said Celestia as they landed and walked away. As the princesses left the garden, the statues stood silent and motionless on their columns. Minutes ticked by and the garden remained empty. A half hour rolled by and there was still no sign of activity in the garden. But there was a very soft faint tapping and rattling sound coming the draconequus statue.

Unknown to the royal sisters, Discord's stone prison had indeed been slowly weakening over the past thirteen years. Now he was mentally prodding at the stone, trying to find its weakest areas. It was difficult because he had to take care he didn't break any of the weak spots just yet. If he tried to break the stone too soon, he might only produce cracks in it, and the tiniest crack would put the royal sisters on alert. If he could have moved, Discord would probably have ground his teeth. He wanted out. The thought that his freedom might be close was almost more maddening than the shock he'd felt when he'd first found himself imprisoned. But he forced himself to be patient, forced himself to remember that he couldn't afford to let any cracks appear in the stone until he was quite sure he could succeed in breaking it completely. 

* * *

**Yea, I like to start the chapters with quotes because I'm one of those deep profound types. Or I'm just pretentious, you decide. And I pretty much just slapped a bunch of tattoos on Discord because if I didn't the title would just be stew-pid.**

**Regarding updates: Expect me to try and post one chapter a week. Hopefully sometimes I can get them out quicker, but for the most part expect updates to be roughly weekly.**


	3. Chapter 2

**Okay, so this chapter took a bit longer than a week to get out, but in my defense I did say the updates would come "roughly" weekly meaning sometimes a little earlier or later.**

**And to BrooklynLeaf who left me a review mentioning the bottle thing was like something a serial killer would send in a Mary Higgins Clark novel: Interesting that you should mention that. And thanks for the review.**

**(Forgot this disclaimer in the earlier chapter) The Shark does not own MLP or the plot from the Millennium trilogy, they belong respectively to Hasbro and whoever got the rights to the trilogy when Mr. Larsson dropped dead.**

* * *

Chapter 2 

"_Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."—James 1:4_

* * *

"You sure you'll be okay out here?" Rainbow Dash asked as she plopped some of Fluttershy's yarn-filled saddlebags down on the cabin floor.

Fluttershy glanced around the cabin. It had been divided into four rooms: a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a living room. They were small but considering it would just be herself and Angel staying there for the next couple of months, they would do. "We'll be fine. Thanks for helping me move my things here."

"Hey, no problem," the blue pegasus grinned. "I'd planned to stop over here anyway. Wanted to get some Sweet Apple Acres Cider." She flew down closer to Fluttershy to whisper in her ear, "Word of advice: when the snow starts coming down, don't go out any more than you have to. Looks like we've got a pretty bad blizzard on the way."

As if affirming this, a great burst of wind howled outside and Fluttershy trembled even though it hadn't gotten through the thick cabin walls. "Can't the weather ponies thin the clouds out?"

"They've been trying. Even we Wonderbolts have been trying but as soon as we clear them up, they come right back just as thick as ever. The best we can do is make sure everypony stays inside with plenty of blankets, fuel, and food, and wait till this thing blows over on its own. That's why I came to get some more cider. I intend to spend this winter reading and sipping cider."

Fluttershy smiled back up at her friend. Over the years the athletic pegasus had become quit an avid reader mostly of adventure stories and mysteries. "I hope you enjoy yourself."

"Oh, I intend to," said Rainbow Dash, swooping back out the cabin door. 

* * *

"Thank you for inviting me to dinner and letting me stay here," Fluttershy said later that evening as she and the Apple family finished up their supper.

"Shucks, weren't nothing. It was nice to have you over," said Apple Bloom.

"Eeyup," said Big Macintosh.

Granny Smith didn't say anything but she took Fluttershy off to the side later while they were cleaning up and whispered, "Meet me upstairs. There's something I need to tell you."

This puzzled Fluttershy. _What would she have to tell me that she couldn't just tell me now?_ However, she decided to go along with the old pony's request and followed her upstairs after they'd finished cleaning up.

Once they were alone in Granny Smith's room, the old earth pony eased herself onto the bed. With a pained expression, she spent several moments adjusting herself on the bed. Fluttershy thought the expression was because of physical discomfort until Granny Smith blurted out. "I had another reason for offering to let you stay here."

"Another reason?"

Granny Smith nodded. "I suppose you know that Applejack went missing after the family reunion all those years ago."

Fluttershy nodded in turn. "We tried our hardest to find her, but no one had seen her." Fluttershy wasn't sure what that statement had to do with her staying at the farm, but before she could give it much thought Granny Smith spoke again.

"I know you tried, and I think I know why you couldn't find her."

"What do you mean?"

Granny Smith looked around, as if to make sure they weren't being observed. Then leaning in close she whispered, "You're the first pony I've ever told this to. I haven't even told Apple Bloom or Big Mac, but," she dropped her voice to an even lower whisper. "I think Applejack was murdered, and I think somepony from the Apple family did it."

Fluttershy gaped at her, stunned. While she and the rest of Applejack's friends had not discussed it in detail, after all their fruitless searching they had come to an unspoken agreement that the earth pony must be dead. Why else would she never have contacted them in the past years? Fluttershy herself had vaguely felt that Applejack might have met with some sort of accident. She much have slipped away during the reunion, fallen into a river, drown and been swept away. She might have gone into the Everfree Forest and been attacked and eaten by some creature. Either one of those cases would explain why they hadn't found her body, but murder?! And by a member of her own family?! No, the idea was absurd. There was no way that—

"I don't like to speak badly of my kinfolks," said Granny Smith. "but the more I've thought about it over the years, it's the only thing that makes sense."

"But there's so many ways she could have disappeared. So many reasons why we couldn't find her—"

"But murder is the only reason that explains what's in there," said Granny Smith, pointing to her closet.

Fluttershy looked nervously at the closet. Not sure what to expect, she opened cautiously and peeked in. She breathed a small sigh of relief when she saw that in the closet were just rows of fancy corked-and-sealed cider bottles. However her relief was quickly replaced with confusion. "I don't understand. What do these bottles have to do with Applejack disappearing?"

"It's those rosebuds that are with them."

Fluttershy peered closer at the rosebuds and realized that they weren't actual flowers but dried apple peelings rolled into the shape of roses. A clever little idea but... "I still don't understand."

"I didn't think you would. I doubt Applejack told any of you, but when she was younger, we had some relatives from Manehattan come to visit and we wanted to impress them. Applejack had been planning to get some flowers for the table to make it look nice, but she had been so busy making cider that she ran out of time. So she gathered up the apple peelings left over from the cider-making and rolled them into little rosebuds just like those, and used them instead.

"After that those little flowers became something of a secret trademark for her. Sometimes she'd tuck them into gifts or just give them on their own, but they've always been something that she reserved for other Apples." Granny Smith's face looked even droopier than usual. "I've received one of those bottles with those rosebuds every year since Applejack disappeared. Why would they be coming that regularly if she had just died a natural death? Who would be sending them? Only another Apple would know those rosebuds were associated with Applejack. That's why I think one of them murdered Applejack and has been sending those bottles here to taunt me."

She gave Fluttershy an apologetic glance. "That's why I asked you here. I'm hoping you can help me find out who killed Applejack."

"I—uh—b-b-but how?" Fluttershy spluttered. She was still reeling from the revelation that Applejack had been murdered. Now she of all ponies was being asked to find the murderer?!

"I already have a plan." Granny Smith pulled an old battered-looking book from under a pillow and flipped to a bookmarked page. "There's a potion in here that can temporarily change cutie marks. I've already made it and if you drink it, it will make your cutie marks look more apple-themed. I'll than introduce you to the rest of the family as Apple Butter. Your story will be that you just discovered you're related to the Apples and want to know more about your new family. That will give you an excuse to look through all our information and records. I've been checking through our family tree over the years, trying to find out who could have wanted to kill Applejack, and now I'm hoping your newer less biased eyes might spot something I've missed."

_So it would be like a research project._ "But why ask me to do it? I'm not that good at that sort of research. That's more Twilight's thing—"

"But she's too well-known as a princess. Rainbow Dash is a famous wonderbolt, Rarity is a famous fashion designer, and Pinkie Pie is a famous party pony."

Fluttershy could see where she was going with this. While Fluttershy was famous to a certain degree, she'd kept much more out of the public eye than the rest of her friends had. If disguised her cover would be much harder to blow than theirs would. But still she couldn't ignore the fact that mystery-solving was far from her strongest point. She'd read her share of mysteries but her track record for solving them before the fictional detectives was pretty low. Still as she looked at Granny Smith wrinkled face, she found herself wanting to help the old pony. She had to at least try.

"Before I agree to this, will you explain why you're telling me all this now? How come you haven't mentioned any of this to anypony before?"

Granny Smith sighed. "Because I hate thinking that one of my own killed Applejack. I've been trying to deny it all my life, but this year I went to the doctors and found out that I'm dying. They think I have roughly about another year to live. And knowing that, I've realized that I don't want to die without knowing for sure what happened to Applejack. Now I know I wasn't right to put you in this position but—"

Fluttershy raised a hoof. "I understand why you did, and I can't promise that I'll be able to find Applejack's killer, but...I'll try." 

* * *

Discord continued his soft tapping of the stone. It was feeling thinner. He put all his strength into trying to arching backward...and felt the stone crack!

_Oh come on, oh, please let the rest break! Please let the rest break! Please let the rest break!_ He tried to twist in another direction and was rewarded with the sensation of even more cracks appearing in the stone. He could have whooped if he could have moved his mouth. Instead he contented himself with a low chuckle in the back of his throat.

_Now if I can just..._ With a quick surge of all the energy he'd been harboring since he'd been imprisoned, he broke completely through and tumbled to the ground! He landed in a thin layer of newly fallen snow only to promptly leap back onto his feet, chuckling and practically prancing with glee. He was out! He was out! After all these centuries he was finally out!

He jumped again and this time floated in midair. Oh yes! He still had it. He looked down at the disturbed snow and swept it smooth with his tail. Then he cracked his knuckles and stretched his limbs before snapping the fingers of his eagle talon. A statue that looked just like him appeared on the pedestal where he had been. The royal sisters would probably eventually realize it wasn't him but it would do for now until he had taken steps to ensure they couldn't imprison him again. He threw a sarcastic salute toward the castle. _Hope you enjoy the new lawn ornament, princesses. I hate to miss your visits, but I got places to go._

* * *

**Regarding rosebuds: When I was little my family once went to see a Christmas tree display and one of them was decorated with roses made of apple peels. The more I thought about it, it seemed like that would be the sort of thing Applejack might make. Practical, recyclable, and edible. What do you think Applejack fans? Does that seem in character for her?**


	4. Chapter 3

**Wouldn't you know it? I set myself a deadline to get this chapter out and everything happens to prevent me from making it.**

**Well, onto the chapter, but first I want to thank the people who favorite and/or are following this story and/or left reviews. I was a bit dubious about whether or not this story would be any good so I'm glad to see it managed to hook your interest. Now hopefully it can continue to maintain that interest.**

**Regarding ratings: For those of you who haven't read the original **_**Girl with the Dragon Tattoo**_** novel, I should probably warn you it contains a lot of R-rated material. For this ponified version of the story I've tried to trim out as much of that R-rated stuff as possible, but the plot is still centered on a character's disappearance/murder. This is where I'm going to need some help from you guys. I'm pretty sure this story isn't going to need much more than a K+ rating, but please let me know if you feel I need to bump the rating up a bit. Thanks.**

**As usual, I own nothing but the brain that somehow dreamed up this silly idea.**

* * *

Chapter 3

"_Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor."—Ecclesiasties 4:9  
_

* * *

__Fluttershy stared at the huge pile of papers in the middle of the cabin's main room. _It didn't seem this big when it was in the wagon_. The longer she stared at the pile, the more she began to feel that she'd taken on an impossible task.

Granny Smith's part of the plan seemed to have gone off without a hitch. Fluttershy had drunk the potion and it had turned the butterflies on her flanks into coral-colored apples. When Granny Smith had started introducing Fluttershy to the rest of the extended Apple family as Apple Butter, a pegasus who had just recently learned that she was distantly related to them, they had all welcomed her cheerfully. When Apple Butter had claimed that she wanted to research the family members to learn more about them, they had all been quite ready and willing to cooperate. In fact, none of them had shown any hesitation at all. None of them had acted as if they had anything to hide. Normally this sort of attitude might have helped set Fluttershy at ease, but with Applejack's murder in mind she had barely been able to suppress a chill rolling down her spine as she met pony after pony. Somewhere behind one of those smiles had been a killer, and a killer who had managed to hide his or her crime for the past ten years.

It had taken Granny Smith and Fluttershy some time to gather all the records from the different family members. It would have been quicker with Apple Bloom and Big Mac along to help, but Granny Smith hadn't wanted to tell them about her belief that a fellow family member had murdered Applejack.

"It was hard enough telling you," she'd said to Fluttershy. "Hard enough thinking about it myself."

When they'd finally gotten back to the farm and hauled the papers into the cabin, Granny Smith had gone off to rest. She had needed to lean against Fluttershy for support and it made the pegasus realize just how much the excursion had taken out of the old pony.

Now Fluttershy was alone in the cabin, apart from Angel who was sleeping in his bed. Glancing down, she saw that the apples on her flanks were shifting back to butterflies. Granny Smith had left the potion, extra ingredients, and the book containing the recipe with Fluttershy in case she might need to use it again or brew more of it, but Fluttershy doubted it would ever come to that. Considering how bad the upcoming storm was supposed to be, she'd probably be spending her whole visit in the cabin. Spending it looking through those papers for a lead on Applejack's killer.

Looking back at the huge pile of papers, Fluttershy felt as if she'd been charged with the task of shoveling a snow-covered field with a drinking straw. But then she thought of what Granny Smith had said about not having long left to live, and she thought of Applejack, dead these past ten years while her killer went free. She couldn't let them down. She had to at least try. She had to start somewhere.

She picked up a paper near the top of the pile and began to read. 

* * *

Princess Twilight Sparkle and her assistant Spike were both fast asleep, completely unaware of the intruder prowling in the study.

Discord had guessed correctly that the spell keeping him imprisoned had weakened since the royal sisters were no longer connected to the elements. He'd also been able to gather that this new princess wielded the element of magic, and that five other ponies now wielded the other five elements that helped power that magic.

His first thought had been to steal the elements and hide them where none of the ponies could find them, but after considering this, he decided against it. Better to trick the wielders of loyalty, laughter, generosity, honesty, and kindness into being the opposite of their elements. Then the element of magic would be useless. Rather than cutting off a snake's head to kill its body, this would be like cutting off an octopus's arms to incapacitate it. It should be interesting, a perfect chance to stretch his abilities after all that time alone. Plus, watching them try to imprison him only to find that their weapons were useless would be much more entertaining than just leaving them unarmed and helpless.

_Yes, _he decided. _Take them out and there's nothing this new princess or any other can do to stop you._

* * *

__Fluttershy let her head thump lightly on the stack of papers she'd been slogging through. _Who am I kidding? I don't know how to do this._ She'd spent the past few days reading through the records, but the words, the names, everything just seemed to slip out of her head. It didn't help that she wasn't even sure what she was looking for in terms of clues. _I need Twilight. I bet she'd be able to find Applejack's killer..._

Fluttershy's head shot up. _Why can't she come help me? I could write to her and explain what's going on. Even if she can't come maybe she can give me some pointers. It can't hurt to check and I'm not getting anywhere on this on my own._

She quickly jotted down a letter explaining her situation to Twilight. She briefly debated whether she should tell Twilight about Granny Smith's belief that Applejack had been murdered. The old earth pony had been pretty adamant that the rest of the Apple family not know about Fluttershy's real reasons for studying their records, but it would probably be best to let Twilight know all the details, if only so that the alicorn could give her the best pointers.

As Fluttershy stepped outside, the wind whipped her mane out behind her and nearly tore the letter out of her mouth. _Oh my goodness, I didn't think it would be getting this bad this quickly._ The falling snow was already up to her fetlocks. She picked her way over the cold fields to the farms mailbox and shoved the letter in. She tried to run back to the cabin but it wasn't easy on the slippery ground. Once she got back inside, she let the heat wash over her. She looked out of one of the windows at the darkening landscape. _It would be hard to travel in that weather. What if Twilight can't make it? What if she doesn't even get my letter?_

* * *

__Meanwhile far above the cabin, ghostly transparent figures in the rough shape of ponies circled through the air. 

* * *

_Three down, two to go. _Discord thought as he materialized outside Fluttershy's cottage. He had found Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity earlier and had psychologically manipulated them into becoming the opposite of their elements.

The pink earth pony had been the easiest to trick. He had brought up her secret fear that her many pony friends were not really her friends, but just a lot of ponies who hung out with her, and secretly laughing at her behind her back. From there it had been child's play to steamroller her mentally. Rainbow Dash had been almost as easy to trick. All he'd had to do was start prodding at the fact that being loyal to some would require her to be disloyal to others. Rarity had resisted at first, but when he planted the idea that her generosity was wasted on those who didn't appreciate it, she had gone down as well. Now he just had to take down Applejack and Fluttershy.

The cold wind sent shivers through his long snake-like body as he peered through the cottage window. Seeing no sign of the pegasus, he teleported inside to begin searching for her. Once inside he noticed that the house wasn't much warmer than the world outside. If it weren't for the fact that there was still plenty of furniture in the cottage, Discord would have guessed that no pony had lived in it for some time. Puzzled, he flopped down on the couch and scratched his head. Maybe this was the wrong cottage. No, he'd looked all over Ponyville and hadn't seen any other cottages like this one. Maybe she was staying with a friend. Maybe he'd missed something when he was looking through Twilight's reports for information on her friends.

He teleported back to the outside of the Canterlot Castle and a gust of wind promptly slammed him into the side of a tower. Wincing, he snapped his talons, intending to make the wind disappear. It died down to a soft breeze for about five seconds, then surged right back up again. Deciding that trying to make these gusts of wind magically go away would be about as effective as trying to destroy an ant hill by stomping on every individual insect, he did his best to ignore them as he inch-wormed his way up the tower toward Twilight's room. Peeking in the window, he saw a mailmare with a letter clamped in her mouth, apparently looking around for the princess. After several seconds of fruitless searching she shrugged her withers and put the letter down on Twilight's desk before trotting out of the room.

As soon as the mailmare was gone, Discord teleported into the room and saw that the letter was addressed to Twilight, from Fluttershy. _And what have we here?_ He flashed the letter into his paw, unfolded it, and scanned its contents. _Well, well, well. So that's where you're hiding. And you want Twilight to come help you solve this little case regarding another one of your friends._ He almost laughed out loud, but managed to restrain it to his thoughts. _Oh, you'll get some help, my dear. But it won't be from your princess pal._

* * *

__***Fluttershy's voice* Oh, dear.**

**I'll probably go back and rewrite this chapter sometime because I don't feel quite satisfied with it. I know I pretty much skimmed over the corruption of Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity, but I kept getting stuck when trying to write those scenes and I wanted to get on with the story. Then again this story isn't so much about them as it is Fluttershy and Discord. But at the same time those scenes might have provided a good example of Discord's character. What do you readers think? Would including corruption scenes of those three of the mane 6 strengthen the story or just slow it down?**

**Well, it looks like Discord and Fluttershy will be meeting in the next chapter, so it may take a little longer than my roughly weekly schedule to get it ready. But don't worry. Just because there might be a couple of weeks between chapters doesn't mean I have abandoned this story. The Shark will see it through to the end.**

**Boy, does that sound melodramatic.**


	5. Chapter 4

**Whew! I'm back. Sorry it's been over a month since I last updated, but thanks for being patient with me.**

**One quick thing about that note I put at the beginning of the earlier chapter regarding ratings. That was more of a warning in case any of you readers are like me and think "Hmm, this looks interesting. I think I'll go read the original book and see how it compares." because while I aim to keep this story as g-rated as possible some of its source material is far from kid-friendly. (You can see my views on the novels as well as the Story behind the Story on my profile.)**

**Regarding this story itself, I want to try and keep the content as reasonably close to what would be in the show, so I don't intend to put things like bad language into it. The story's K+-rating mainly comes from the fact that I thought the whole "Applejack being murdered by a family member, and Odd Couple tries to find her killer" plot might seem kind of dark to some people (And I kinda doubt that type of story would crop up in the cartoon) but not quite enough to warrant a T-rating.**

**Blah-blahbity-blah, I own nothing.**

* * *

Chapter 4

"_But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," –Matthew 5:44_

* * *

That morning Fluttershy was awakened by a soft _whiff-whiff-whiff-whiff-whiff_ of delicate wings beating. Opening her eyes, she looked up to see what appeared to be an off-white butterfly flapping about over her head.

"Oh, hello. Where did you come from?" she asked it. She hadn't seen any signs of insects either in the cabin or outside of it ever since she'd arrived. In fact, she'd been sure the weather had been too cold for them for quite some time now.

The butterfly ignored her question and flew higher until its wings almost brushed the ceiling. Then it flew toward the far end of the room before suddenly looping around and zooming toward Fluttershy like a bullet. They pony's eyes widened at this unexpected attack and instinctively dodged to the side. The butterfly crashed into the headboard with enough force to rock the bed back on two legs a fraction before bouncing off and tumbling across the covers in a crumpled heap.

Fluttershy gasped. "Oh my goodness! Are you all right?" She reached out, intending to take the butterfly as gently as she could in her hooves when it suddenly shot back up in the air and snapped its wings open. The wings stretched out farther than they had earlier and it was then that Fluttershy realized it wasn't a real butterfly, but paper that had been folded up into the shape of one. The paper finished unfolding itself and floated slowly down onto the bed, where it lay limp and lifeless.

As she studied the former piece of flying origami, Fluttershy noticed it had writing on one side of it, and, after a moment's hesitation, she picked it up to read it. 

_Fluttershy,_

_Princess Twilight Sparkle has received your letter but is currently too busy to come help you. She will be sending a substitute in her place._

That was all. No signature. No information on the substitute, and no information about when or how he or she was supposed to arrive.

Fluttershy frowned at the letter. It didn't seem in character for Twilight to write such a brief formal note. At the very least, Fluttershy had expected Twilight to express the same shock she herself had felt at the news that Applejack had been murdered by a member of her own family.

_Well, maybe she really is just that busy and somepony else wrote this for her,_ Fluttershy thought. She wondered, if Twilight herself hadn't written the letter, who had. Had he or she had a part in its bizarre delivery as well? 

* * *

Outside Discord clung to the side of the cabin, watching Fluttershy through the window. He had shrunk himself down to just a few inches long so that he could wedge himself between two logs and get somewhat out of the wind. He'd gotten some chuckles out of torpedoing that butterfly-shaped letter at her.

_So that's the element of kindness,_ he thought, far from impressed with what he saw. _It shouldn't take too long to make her realize that being nice gets you nowhere._

* * *

Carrying the letter in her mouth, Fluttershy trotted from the bedroom into the cabin's main room. Angel was sleeping in his basket near the fireplace, and the yarn and needles she'd brought for knitting were on the floor beside the couch. Stacked against one wall were the Apple family records. After giving up trying to make sense of them on her own, she'd arranged them in several neat stacks that were almost as tall as she was.

She moved to one of the windows to peer outside. The fields were now entirely white with snow. The orchard's bare branches resembled gnarled black hands clawing at the gray sky above as the wind blew them about. There was no sign of anypony as far as she could see. She took the letter out of her mouth to check it again, turning it over just to make sure she hadn't missed anything. Nope. No information about when her help was expected to arrive—

_Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!  
_  
Fluttershy jumped at the unexpected knocking on the cabin door. She looked back out the window. Whoever was knocking must have been teleported right to the front door because there was still no sign of a trail leading to the cabin.

Trotting to the door, she reached out to open it, but a sudden uneasy feeling made her hesitate. She realized that the door didn't have a peephole on it like the one to her own cottage had. She hadn't really thought about it when she'd first moved into the cabin, but now she realized that the only way to know who was at the door was to open it up.

_Knock! Knock! Knock!_

"Who is that?" Fluttershy asked tentatively.

There was no answer.

Taking a deep breath, she opened the door just a few inches so that she could peek out. Cold air leaked around the opening into the cabin, causing her to shiver. Seeing nothing, she pushed the door open just a little wider.

She could still see no sign of anypony, so she pushed the door open still wider, looking in both directions. All she saw was the empty landscape.

_Maybe the wind was just making the door rattle,_ she thought. The knocking hadn't sounded like a door rattling but she couldn't think of any other explanation as to what would create the sound when there was no sign of any pony nearby.

Not wanting to let anymore cold air in, she pushed the door shut, turned around...

And leaped backward with a squeak of shock.

Floating several feet off the floor, and leaning back with his hands behind his head was a... well, Fluttershy wasn't quite sure what the creature was.

His head looked a bit like a pony's but his scruffy beard and the horn-and-antler combo on his skull also gave him a goat-like appearance. A long fang jutting down from one side of his mouth made him look even less pony-like. The furry brown body attached to that head was long and snake-like, and terminated in an equally long scaly tail. Two wings, one leathery and one feathered, were growing from the creature's back but he didn't seem to be using them to maintain his midair position. His four legs were all limbs of different animals: a lion and an eagle for the right and left front limbs respectively, something scaly for the right back leg and something hoofed for the left back one.

As if to just top off his bizarre appearance, the creature had a collection of studs and rings through his ears, nose, nostril, the side of his mouth opposite his fang, and through both shaggy eyebrows. There were also what appeared to be tattoos over most of his body. The most noticeable ones were several wasps scattered over his long neck on either side of his bristly black mane, a spiral pattern on his lion shoulder, two barbed loops on his eagle limb, one on the wrist and one around the biceps, and last though far from least, a large stylized dragon whose head emerged over one furry shoulder and whose long body wound around and around his own long one, giving him an almost striped appearance.

Fluttershy had been so stunned at the sight of this creature that had materialized in the cabin that she just stood there against the door, gaping at him, taking in every strange detail. Her new visitor just grinned at her while she tried to find her voice.

Finally she managed to stammer out, "Wh-who... wh-wh-what... are you? How did—?"

"Who am I?" he replied, leaning forward so that he was now floating in a sitting position, and placing his eagle claw on his chest. "Discord. What am I? A draconequus, otherwise known at the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. You might have heard of me."

At the words "chaos and disharmony", Fluttershy suddenly remembered a frightening stained glass image she had seen many years ago of a creature that had looked very similar to this one. At the time, she had thought the image had just been made up to represent the abstract concepts of chaos and disharmony. She'd never expected that such a creature could actually be real. Now that it was standing, well, floating before her in the flesh she felt the familiar knot of fear raise in her throat.

She swallowed nervously. "Wha—what are you doing here?"

He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head, making reproving clicking sounds with his tongue. "Now, is that any way to talk to your new aid?"

"New aid—?" Fluttershy's eyes widened. "You're Twilight's substitute?" When she'd thought about the substitute mentioned in Twilight's note she had vaguely been expecting some unicorn. Never had she expected Twilight to send her someone like this.

_But then again, we're not supposed to judge a book by its cover,_ she thought. _Maybe there's more to him than meets the eye. He must be alright if Twilight sent him._ She lowered herself back onto all fours and took a few tentative steps toward him.

"It's nice to meet you, um, Discord," she said, smiling in spite of her nervousness. "I suppose you already know I'm Fluttershy." She pointed to the basket where her pet bunny was still sleeping. "That's Angel." She moved to the stacks of records. "This is what I need help with. You see—"

Before she could finish her sentence, Discord rolled himself about in a summersault so that he was floating on his stomach rather than his back, yawned, and snapped his talons. The many sheets of paper sailed into the air like a flock of birds. A second snap of his talons, and the papers had turned into bouncy balls that proceeded to ricochet all over the cabin.

Fluttershy let out a small surprised shriek. Angel jerked awake, stared at their newcomer, and promptly took cover under the couch.

"What did you do?" Fluttershy whisper-shouted at Discord, covering her head with her hooves in an attempt to protect it from the pelting balls.

Discord regarded the bouncy balls with a critical eye as they whizzed past him before he snapped his talons a third time. The bouncy balls turned into larger, less bouncy ones that settled on the floor in a layer that reached to Fluttershy's stomach.

She looked around at the sea of colorful balls, her brain stilly trying to adjust to the fact that mere seconds ago they had been sheets of information on the Apple family. "Um, could you change these back?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I could if I wanted to, but I don't feel like it."

Fluttershy's head shot up, shocked at his flippant attitude. "But I need those records back the way they were!" she said, flying up to him. "Twilight didn't send you here to—"

She felt the words die on her tongue as Discord smirked and arched one brow.

Fluttershy swallowed uneasily. "She did send you... didn't she?"

"You said it, my dear. I didn't." He paused a moment, then added almost as an afterthought. "You know your detective skills really are pathetic."

His comment stung, but she had to admit that so far her attempts to solve Applejack's disappearance showed there might at least some truth in what he said. And even if he wasn't the aid Twilight had sent, he did seem to know something about that aid. Maybe the gentle humble approach would soften him up a bit and he would share what he knew.

"I know they are," she said, referring to her detection skills. "That's why I contacted Twilight for help—but then I guess you already knew that because you mentioned an aid when you first got here. I suppose you were just playing a joke when you pretended you were that aid and you really fooled me." She forced out a quick soft little laugh. "Yes, you really fooled me. But can we put that aside now? I mean, finding out what happened to Applejack is really important to me and to some other ponies depending on me. So maybe you could just tell me when and how Twilight's substitute is supposed to get here and—"

At that moment Discord shut his eyes and hit his forehead with his palm. "Look, no one's coming to help you," he said, sounding annoyed for the first time.

"But I got a letter saying—"

Discord held up a hand, palm upward and two rolled-up sheets of paper appeared in it with a flash of light. "This look familiar?" he asked, letting them unroll with a flick of his wrist.

Fluttershy recognized both the letter she'd written and the one she'd gotten earlier. She looked up from them to meet his face, realization dawning on her. "Did you write this?"

"Bravo, Sherlock," he said sarcastically.

Exactly what he meant by that Fluttershy wasn't sure, but his tone of voice made her uneasy.

"And incidentally I didn't write it on Twilight Sparkle's orders," he added, tossing both notes into the air where they vanished in a flash of light. "She doesn't even know you wrote to her in the first place."

At those words Fluttershy felt the cold grip of fear tighten around her throat. Ever since Discord had appeared in the cabin, she hadn't been able to shake a vague but growing sense of uneasiness. Now, at the news that her letter had never even reached its destination, that sense of unease when from slowly growing to rapidly erupting. "What do you want with me?" she whispered, as she tried to fly backward to put more distance between them.

Before she'd moved back more than a few inches, he suddenly reached out and grabbed her by the wings, bringing her toward him until they were almost eyeball to eyeball.

"Aww, you mean you can't guess? Isn't the title 'Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony' a big enough clue for you?" he asked, using his free hand to make the gesture for quotation marks. "If you can't catch something that obvious, no wonder you haven't been able to find your friend's killer. You probably couldn't find your own tail if it grew out of your nose." And with that he brought his free hand up to her face and before she could so much as squeak in protest he had yanked something out of her nose.

Clapping her hooves over her muzzle, she gasped when she saw that he now holding what appeared to be her tail in his hand.

"Hmm, Extensions. What do you know," he commented, glancing over at it.

Still keeping one hoof over her muzzle, Fluttershy felt behind her to see how many extensions he'd magicked off her tail. To her horror, she discovered he'd managed to take not just her extensions but her whole tail along with them.

Discord suddenly let go of her, letting her drop into the layer of balls on the floor. She scrambled up and fled to her room. In the back of her mind she knew this was probably a vain attempt to escape, but at the front of her mind all she could think of was putting as much distance between herself and the draconequus. She saw Angel's long ears popping up out of the balls near the bedroom door before he jumped through it. She darted in right behind him and slammed the door shut. As she leaned against the door, she felt something brush her back legs and jumped with a squeak of fear. Looking down, she got another shock when she saw that her tail, extensions and all, was right back in its proper place.

* * *

In the main room, Discord chuckled as he heard Fluttershy's frightened squeak. _Yes, this should be interesting,_ he thought to himself.

* * *

The next several days were hard ones for Fluttershy. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so powerless. She couldn't boot her new housemate out of the cabin because he could just teleport himself right back in, she couldn't take herself and Angel out because the snow storms were getting steadily worse, and for that same reason she couldn't count on anypony coming to help her. The most she could do was at least try to live with the draconequus, but that was proving to be far from easy. She tried being gentle with him and he ignored it. She tried to be firm with him and he laughed at her. At one point she even tried using the Stare on him, only to have him shrug it off like it was nothing.

Discord, on the other hoof, lost no opportunity to insult her, ridicule her, and wreak chaos in the cabin. One day, he even magically yanked the cabin off the ground and let it spin end over end. The balls he still hadn't turned back into papers rained all over the rooms like colorful hail and everything else in the cabin was crashing about as well.

"Discord! Stop!" Fluttershy cried out as she snatched Angel up to keep him from getting squashed by any falling items. Tucking the old bunny in the crook of one front leg, she flew over to where Discord was floating. The tattooed draconequus seemed completely impervious to chaos around him, a fact that Fluttershy found quite annoying, and that also gave her the courage she hadn't been able to work up on her own.

"Put! This! Cabin! Down! Now!" she shouted, sticking her muzzle right in his pierced face. "Put it down, now! This instant!

His shaggy eyebrows went up and for a second Fluttershy thought she saw a flash of surprise on his face. But then he let out a hearty chuckle.

"With pleasure!" He snapped his fingers and the cabin promptly came down with a crash. Not expecting him to put the cabin down so quickly, Fluttershy was slammed into the ceiling as it descended. She fell to the floor, instinctively wrapping her body around Angel to protect him. She tried to brace herself for smacking into the hard wood, not having time to slow her fall with her wings, and found herself landing in a huge pile of papers. Sitting up she saw that in addition to putting the house down, Discord seemed to have changed the records back.

She looked up at Discord to see him still up in the air, only this time he was actually beating his wings rather than just floating there. She felt her anger from earlier melt away at the realization that he'd listened to her.

"Thank you," she said softly. "Thank you for putting the cabin down and changing these back."

She reached toward some of the papers, only to have them all scuttle out of her reach like huge white cockroaches. She shut her eyes and softly but deeply breathed in and out. _Of course he would do something like that.  
_

When she opened her eyes, she saw him watching her with interest. She wanted to be both angry with him and patient with him, but all she could summon was a sort of weary frustration, as if her feelings knew that any other reaction would be useless.

"Discord," she said in a resigned voice. "I'm going to take Angel to my room, so... Could you please give us some alone time?" At this point she wasn't even sure way she bothered to tell him this. Maybe she still held a faint hope that he had a more considerate side buried somewhere in there.

Discord gave her a 'do-I-even-need-to-answer-that?' look.

"Please," Fluttershy said as she stood up with Angel wrapped in one of her front legs. "please just leave us alone." Head down she walked toward her room, expecting him to magically slam the door shut, but he did not. Going inside, she glanced back at him one more time. He had lowered himself enough to plant his back feet on the floor and was watching her with an unreadable expression. Then a smile twitched across his mouth and he raised his paw with the fingers together as if intending to snap them.

With a gasp, Fluttershy slammed the door shut. She sat there, quivering, waiting for the draconequus to snap her back into the main room, but several minutes went by and this did not happen.

Then Fluttershy felt Angel reach up to pat her face with a paw. His white coat didn't show aging as well as that of a darker colored rabbit would, but when she stroked it Fluttershy could tell it was much thinner than it had once been, and his once shiny eyes were now going cloudy. She didn't like to think about it often but she couldn't ignore the fact that her pet was nearing the end of his life. Now looking at her old bunny made her think of how Granny Smith had said she didn't have much longer to live, and thinking of that made her think about her task to find Applejack's killer.

Tears filled her eyes as she cuddled Angel close to her. "I don't know what to do, Angel," she whimpered as the tears spilled down her cheeks. "I just don't know what to do."

Angel pulled himself up higher on her shoulder and rubbed his head against her cheek, ignoring the tears that soaked his head and ears, and offering what comfort he could.

* * *

***chuckles nervously* Well, looks like Fluttershy and Discord aren't off to the most spectacular start... then again they didn't start out that great in the cartoon either. And yes, I decided to make the 'Fluttershy has tail extensions' rumor true here. More on that in a future chapter.**

**Man, if nothing else, working on this story has given me a new respect for fanfiction writers. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've discovered that for me writing for characters I didn't make up myself is surprisingly hard. (One of the reasons this chapter took so long to produce I'm afraid.) Fortunately I'm already working on the next couple of chapters so hopefully we won't have any more super long delays.**

**As usual, any constructive criticism is welcome, and don't worry about hurting my feelings if you have any negative criticism because I ultimately want to improve as a writer.**


	6. Chapter 5

**This one's a bit shorter than the earlier one, but I expect several of the later chapters to be longer. Once again, I want to thank those of you who favorited the story and/or left reviews. I was a bit nervous about Fluttershy and Discord's first meeting right so I'm glad to see you seemed happy with how I did it.**

**Regarding Constructive Criticism: One of the big things for me is keeping the characters in-character or rather "reasonably in-character" considering it's alternate universe. Please let me know if you feel I'm making the characters act out-of-character, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.**

* * *

Chapter 5

"_If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity the one who falls and has no one to help him up."—Ecclesiastes 4:10_

* * *

Fluttershy tried to keep her frustrated sobs quiet so that Discord wouldn't hear her, but outside the bedroom he could hear her just fine. The draconequus let out a soft groan and massaged his forehead with a paw. He'd been careful not to let it show but over the past several days he himself had been growing steadily more frustrated. He had brainwashed Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash with ease and yet this timid little pegasus, who he had hardly expected to present a challenge, had somehow managed to resist all his manipulation.

At first this had surprised and intrigued him, but now it was only irritating. If Applejack was indeed dead as they believed, Fluttershy was the only pony still standing in his way. Technically there was still Twilight Sparkle to deal with, but he was sure there was no way she could take him down without her friends to help power the elements. Of course, the fact that Applejack wasn't around might be enough to keep the elements from working so Fluttershy's corruption might not be completely necessary ... but the fact that he had already spent several days trying to force her into being the opposite of her element made him reluctant to abandon the scheme.

Which brought him right back to the crux of the matter: Though she clearly feared him, Fluttershy had found the courage to stand up to him, but he had yet to get any cruel or sadistic reactions out of her. That was all he needed to throw her under his spell and that was the one thing he just … couldn't... get! The fact that this was the only thing holding up his plans for Equestria made it feel like the pegasus's existence was a rock he kept stubbing his toe on with every other step, and waiting for that one essential reaction was beginning to feel like rooting for a sport's team that just wouldn't get off the bench.

He had been so sure he'd pushed her hard enough with his antics just a few minutes earlier. When she'd gotten right in his face and yelled at him, he had been eagerly anticipating the moment when she would finally drop that kindness act she'd been trying on him since he'd arrived. … And that moment never came. As soon as he'd dropped the cabin back to the ground (intentionally not giving her a chance to prepare for it) she'd just put away all that anger and politely thanked him for listening to her. At that point Discord had felt irritated enough to tear out his own bushy eyebrows. Not just magically detach them but actually yank them out, roots and all. He had granted the pony her requested alone time merely because he needed some of his own.

Levitating his legs back off the floor, he glided back and forth across the room, drumming his eagle talons lightly on his upper right arm and tugging at his beard with his lion paw while he reviewed his options. If he couldn't manipulate Fluttershy into being cruel, he could always just jab her on the skull and brainwash her manually but the idea held no appeal to him. Sure, the results would be the same and no one would ever have to know that he had taken that short cut...

But he would know. And any time he looked at the pegasus afterward he would be forced to remember that he had cheated at his own game, and that by cheating at his own game he had essentially admitted that he hadn't been able to win against her.

_No,_ he decided. _No pony is going to beat me at my own game. Especially not one afraid of her own shadow._

He might resort to the manual brainwashing if things became desperate, but right now there was still time to break her the more entertaining way. He just needed to formulate a new method of attack. He glanced out the window at the snow-covered landscape which now looked almost like a blank canvas waiting to be splattered with paint. The simile sparked a new idea in his mind. There was only so much that even he could do in this little cabin. Maybe going out and having a larger space to manipulate would give the scheming sections of his brain fresh inspiration. It's be a shame to let all that blank whiteness go to waste. A shame not to fill it with something weird and colorful.

* * *

Fluttershy finally managed to get her crying under control. She offered Angel a small watery smile as thanks for his comfort. Then the smile slipped when she realized that she hadn't heard anything outside the room, and the fact that it was that quiet made her wonder what Discord was up to. Putting Angel on her bed, she went to the door and opened it a crack just in time to see Discord teleport away from the window and over to the front door.

"What are you doing?" she asked fearfully as she saw him put his paw on the door knob.

"What does it look like? I'm going out."

Fluttershy pushed her bedroom door open all the way and ran toward him. "But-but-but it keeps storming out there! What if you get lost? What if you freeze to death?" As much as she disliked the draconequus, she didn't want him to end up freezing to death in a blizzard. "What if—?"

"Oh, please." Discord said, making a coat appear on his body and a scarf appear around his neck. "You honestly believe flakes of frozen water are going to hurt me?"

"But—"

"See you later." With that, Discord pulled the door open and let a wall of snow tumble into the cabin. Fluttershy shrieked in alarm and ran forward to try and push the door shut on the snow. Discord disappeared in a flash of light. As Fluttershy struggled to force the door shut, she saw him materialize outside and wave good-bye to her. Tears of anger filled her eyes as she looked at the snow now covering the cabin floor. _You did that on purpose,_ she seethed as she watched him fly off. _You could have just teleported outside without opening the door, but you wanted to leave me with a huge mess to deal with._

* * *

Unbeknownst to its inhabitants, several semi-transparent pony-shaped creatures were currently swirling through the air above the cabin, drinking in the strong emotions that emanated from it. When the draconequus appeared outside the cabin they could sense that his heart was as cold as the air around them. As he moved away from the cabin, they followed him, invisible against the clouds, and feeding on the power coming from him.

* * *

Despite the cold, Discord was enjoying himself, changing the landscape around him into anything that came to mind. He didn't make any of those changes permanent, but rather designed them to slowly fade, allowing them to bleed together one on top of the other. Jungle, tundra, candyland, and many other places, all with a few bizarre details mixed into them. The snow continued to fall but he didn't mind. It was an interesting effect, watching it cover the cacti, the palm trees, and the gumdrop trees all at the same time.

However, he was beginning to get tired of working against the wind. Any time he tried to redirect it, more gusts took its place. Spotting a cave some distance away, he teleported to it to get out of the wind.

"Brrr," he commented, making his coat and scarf disappear as he shook off whatever snow had managed to stick to his scales and fur. He also shook his head from side to side, causing the wasp tattoos on his neck to fly about over it as though agitated before settling back down in different positions. Then he grabbed his dragon tattoo by the neck and peeled it away from where it emerged over his shoulder. The tattoo let out an annoyed screech and spat out a stream of multi-colored ink that splattered across the cave wall. Ignoring this, Discord pulled the tattoo paw-over-claw and it began to slide up off his body. Once it was completely off, and still screeching in protest, he shook it out like a sheet. Finally satisfied, he slung it back over his shoulder, causing the tattoo to slap wetly across his upper back before it wrapped around and around his body. The tattoo stuck wherever it touched and sunk through the fur to the skin below.

Flashing his coat and scarf back on, he glanced around the cave before jumping into the air. With a snap of his fingers, he turned the cave's floor into ice and its walls to rubber. Landing, he skated across the ice, bouncing off the now-elastic walls like a pinball, and letting his mind drift back to a certain butter-colored pony.

Thinking back to their last encounters, he realized he'd almost gotten to her. Maybe he didn't need to change his tactics after all. Maybe it was just a matter of wearing her down, and, while she'd proven to be more resilient than he'd expected, he had indeed been wearing her down. Musing on this, he continued to skate about until his feet were numb and his legs felt tired. Slowing to a stop, he leaned over, resting his hands on his knees. Maybe it was time to go back, he decided.

He straightened up, crouched to take off ... and to his surprise found that he couldn't move his feet! Looking down, he saw that both his feet were incased in ice, and that ice was silently but swiftly creeping up his legs! He let out an annoyed grunt and snapped his talons, intending to make the ice disappear. But the ice did not disappear or even slow its progress. Now it had reached his hips. He tried to smash the ice with his tail but the ice had already reached his tail's base and was traveling over its length. He felt his tail halt in mid-swing. Twisting his neck around he was just in time to see the tufted end of his tail get swallowed up by the ice. Now the ice had reached the middle of his long body.

He tried changing the ice into water, marshmallows, lasagna, jello, anything he could think of but the ice stubbornly remained ice. Now it was up to his chest. He conjured up a blow-torch and tried applying it to the ice, but it had no more effect than anything else he had tried. He flashed the blow-torch back out of existence, intending to replace it with a larger more powerful flame-thrower, but by then the ice had traveled over his arms and before he knew it, his hands were encased in the stuff as well. At that point he gave in to blind panic. Now the ice was racing up his neck. He twisted his head this way and that, grunting, straining, trying to will the inevitable not to happen...

Then the ice closed over his face. For the first time in days he couldn't move, not a finger or a toe. He couldn't make a sound. He couldn't shiver in the cold that surrounded him. He couldn't even make his eyes go wide in horror though they were trying for all they were worth. All the memories of being imprisoned in stone came rushing back. Once again he was trapped.

* * *

**Oh, forgot to add I own neither MLP nor any of Mr. Larsson's work.**


	7. Chapter 6

**Well, here we are on the next chapter. As previously stated the Shark owns nothing.**

**Regarding some reviewers' guesses as to what will happen in this chapter: Hmm, those are good guesses but ... well, I'll let the chapter tell you itself.**

**Oh, and I want to thank BrooklynLeaf for catching that typo for me.**

* * *

Chapter 6

"_No greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his live for his friends."—John 15:13_

* * *

Soon after Discord left, Fluttershy began the long process of cleaning up the mess he'd left behind. She gathered up the papers that had been scattered throughout the cabin, stacking them in her bedroom this time. She scooped up most of the snow and piled it in tubs and buckets to use as water later on. Then she used the rest of the now-melted snow to wash the floor.

_Why are you doing this?_ She wondered to herself. _He'll just undo it all as soon as he comes back._ But she continued cleaning anyway. She intended to enjoy a tidy cabin while she could.

By the time she'd finished cleaning up, she felt too tired to try and look through the Apple family records, so she decided to spend some time knitting, hoping it would help her recharge. The only skeins of yarn she now had were the ones Discord had changed into multi-colored things that were thread-thin in some places and thick as the average pony's hoof in others, so her knitting results were uneven and looked nothing like the original pattern, but the process was soothing even in spite of this.

As her needles clicked away, the wind screamed long and loud outside. After several minutes she put down her knitting and went to the window to look outside. The snow was swirling so thickly she could barely see out. She shivered at the thought of being out there in that storm. She'd heard stories of ponies who had gone out in such storms, had become lost end ended up freezing just a few feet from their houses.

_Thank goodness I have everything I need in here,_ she thought. Of course the heavier storm probably meant that Discord would be popping back into the cabin all too soon. She went back to her knitting, and as she worked she waited with a sense of dread for the draconequus to materialize.

The hours crawled by with no sign of him. She eventually put the knitting aside to feed Angel and to get her own supper. Still Discord did not appear. She tucked Angel into his bed and Discord still hadn't appeared.

Finally she went to her own bed and curled up under the blankets. She shut her eyes, pretending to be asleep but inwardly braced for the sound of Discord's return. He'd probably just been waiting for her to fall asleep so that he could pop in and terrify her. As the minutes ticked by with still no sign of him, she began to wish he would just appear and get it over with. Still he didn't appear and, finally weary of bracing herself for his return, she tried to fall asleep.

But sleep wouldn't come. She just kept thinking of him. Where was he? Why wasn't he back? Had he created a new place to stay? Maybe he had, but the magic she'd seen him doing outside had all seemed to wear off after a few minutes. Shame the same couldn't be said for what he'd done inside.

What if he had gotten lost out there?

_It would serve him right!_ she thought with satisfaction, and promptly regretted the thought a moment later. She would have been quite happy to never have to see the draconequus again but she wouldn't wish that fate on anyone.

She sighed, frustrated that he could bother her so much even when he wasn't around. Try as she might she just couldn't seem to sleep if she didn't know whether or not he was all right. _Stupid, stupid, stupid, _she kept thinking as she got out of bed. _This is idiotic. You warned him not to go out and he just threw it back in your face like he's done with everything else. After how he's acted, you have no obligation to go out looking for him_. And yet even as she thought this she began putting on her heaviest winter coat. The blue-and-white coat had no openings for her wings, but she doubted she could have flown in the current storm anyway.

_This is crazy!_ her mind screamed at her. _What if you get lost out there?_

_I'll be careful,_ she tried to reassure herself. _I'll tie some yarn to the cabin door and let it trail behind me. Then if I get lost I can just follow it back here._

_And how long do you intend to be out there?_ the little voice in the back of her head asked. _You could easily freeze to death before you make it back here._

This time she had no answer for the voice. She only knew that she had to find out if Discord was all right. If he had frozen to death it would be too bad but she had warned him. If he hadn't ... well, she couldn't really say that she'd be glad. Her kind nature, the side of her that had a hard time watching other creatures suffer, would feel relieved, but the rest of her was all too aware that Discord's continued existence would mean more torment for her.

_And what about Angel? Who will take care of him if you can't get back here?_

_He knows where the food is. He can look after himself. He—_

She moved over to where the old bunny was sleeping. Even with Discord around, Angel had been sleeping a lot more often than he used to. She knew that bunnies normally lived about ten or twelve years and thanks to her care Angel was a good bit past that but he was no more immortal than she was. Looking down at him, she found herself wondering if someday he would just go to sleep and not wake up. That possibility suddenly seemed much more likely than she wanted to admit. She stroked his head gently with her hoof, whispering a soft good-bye before going to her saddlebags and tucking the largest ball of yarn she could find into one of them.

When Fluttershy pulled the door open a crack, the wind outside shrieked and she almost changed her mind about going out right then and there. But her heart wouldn't let her, and she forced herself to step out. The snow around the cabin was piled higher than her chest and she had to dig at it with her hooves to make space for herself. Even with her coat on it was bitter cold. Neither the moon nor a single star could be seen in the dark cloudy sky above. And below that vast blackness the snowy landscape was a dreary gray.

Already shivering, Fluttershy pulled the door shut behind her and, hooves trembling, tied one end of the yarn in her saddlebag to the door knob.

* * *

Trapped in his new ice prison, Discord was mentally cursing himself. Why hadn't he been able to stop this? Why had his magic had no effect on this ice? He'd had those several days of glorious freedom and now he was stuck right back where he'd been for the last thousand years. Well, not exactly right back where he'd been stuck but close enough! Once again he was unable to move, unable to interact with the world, unable to do anything!

Hadn't that pegasus warned him that going outside would be a bad idea? Of course he'd scoffed at the idea because he was Discord. He had the kind of power no other creature in Equestria had, and thus the dangers and perils they faced didn't apply to him, had never applied to him...

_And wasn't it that kind of attitude that allowed the royal sisters to imprison you in the first place?_ A small disgusted voice in the back of his mind asked. _Assuming you could just magic away any inconvenience that cropped up in your path?_

* * *

"Discord!" Fluttershy called over the howl of the wind. She had been wading through snow almost up to her chin. On the one hoof, the deep snow kept her body from being buffeted by the wind, but on the other hoof, it also made the going a lot more difficult.

"Discord!" She wasn't sure how far her usually soft voice would carry in the storm but she continued to call out his name at intervals. Snowflakes blew into her face, making it difficult to see.

_You should go back. You'll never find him out here. In fact he's probably back at the cabin now, all warm and cozy, laughing at the fact that you're struggling out here trying to find him,_ the voice in her head kept urging her. _Turn back now before you freeze._

_No,_ she thought. _Just five more steps, and then I'll turn back. Just five more steps. Just five more steps. Just five more steps._ She'd been repeating that phrase over and over to herself for who-knew how many steps ever since she'd first left the cabin.

_You can't keep this up. You know you can't!_ the voice in her head protested and Fluttershy had to admit that the voice was right. She had gone out intending to search until she found the draconequus, but it was beginning to look like that might not be possible.

There was a brief lull in the wind before it started back up again, and in that brief lull Fluttershy saw a cave in the distance. _I'll keep going until I reach that cave, _she thought. _Then I'll rest there out of the wind and snow for a bit. Then I'll head back._ Her drive to find Discord had begun to fade after what must have been several hours of snow wading. If she couldn't find him, and he didn't turn up on his own, she would just have to accept not knowing what had happened to him… just as she had been forced to do with Applejack all those years ago.

Still calling Discord's name every five minutes, she neared the cave. The snow looked a lot shallower at the cave's entrance, and she lunged forward, eager to no longer be buried up to her chin. As she burst through the snow, her hooves struck ice and she felt herself slipping. Squealing, she scrabbled her hooves against the ice but was unable to get any traction and went sliding into the cave. Her left legs went one way, her right legs went the other way, and she went sprawling on her stomach. Her thickly padded coat helped cushion her fall but did nothing to slow her down. Whimpering, she squeezed her eyes shut as she spun across the ice.

* * *

Discord was still fuming to himself when he heard a faint voice calling his name. At first he thought he must have imagined it, but then a few minutes later, he heard it again.

"Discord!"

_That sounds like Fluttershy!_ he thought, now even more certain he was imagining it. There was no way that she would be out—

His thoughts were interrupted by a combination of squealing and scuffling, and the next moment a blue, white, pale yellow, and pale pink blue came spinning into the room across the ice. It bounced off his ice prison like a pinball before slowly coming to a stop, facing him. If he could have moved, Discord would have blinked and rubbed his eyes to make sure they weren't playing tricks on him.

As Fluttershy came to a stop, she cautiously cracked an eye open. Then both her eyes flew open and she stared up at the twisted figure of the draconequus and the thick layer of ice encasing him.

"Oh my goodness." She pushed herself up onto all fours and half-ran, half-slid closer to him. His eyes followed her as she circled him.

"Oh, my goodness," she repeated as she put out a hoof to touch his icy side just above the hip. "Don't worry, Discord! I'll get you out! … somehow." She lowered her head and shut her eyes. _Think Fluttershy, think! How can you break that ice?_

_Why do you even want to break him out of there? _demanded that small voice in the back of her head. _It would serve him right if you just left him here and followed your yarn back to the cabin—_

Her eyes popped open. _The yarn!_ she mentally shouted. That was it! She could follow the yarn back to the cabin, find something there to break the ice, then bring it back to the cave to free him.

"Hold on, Discord. I'll be right back." She put a hoof in her saddlebag...and froze. Her yarn was gone! She tore off her saddlebag, turned it upside down and shook it. No yarn came out! Tossing the saddlebag back over her back, she ran toward the middle of the cave, searching frantically about for her yarn. Then she spotted it at the far end of the cave in the direction of its entrance. It must have been jostled out of her bag when she'd fallen and gone sliding into the cave earlier.

She began gathering it up and tucking it back into her bag as she made her way back to the cave's entrance. Looking out, she saw that the storm had gotten even worse. The snow was starting to pile up inside the cave's entrance as well as outside of it. The cold wind seemed to bite through her padded coat as if it were merely a light jacket. Fluttershy felt her heart quail at the thought of going back out there but what choice did she have?

She was just readying herself to step out of the cave when a new thought made her halt. She had intended to gather up her yarn trail as she followed it back to the cabin but now it occurred to her that if she did that she might not be able to find her way back to the cave. She looked about for something to tie the free end of her yarn to but could find nothing on the icy floor and the walls were too smooth.

Then she thought of Discord. _I can tie the free end of the yarn around him,_ she thought, hurrying back to him. She was halfway across the room when she discovered to her dismay that the yarn was too short to reach the draconequus let alone to tie around him. She tried to stretch the yarn a little farther. _Come on,_ she thought. _Come on, just a little—_The yarn snapped, causing Fluttershy to sit down hard on her rear end. Oh, what was she going to do? If she tried to follow the yarn back without tying it down to something she wouldn't be able to find the cave again, but there was nothing within reach for her to tie it to.

_So just go back to the cabin and stay there,_ the little voice in her head said. _Forget about Discord._

She looked back at the draconequus, meeting yellow eyes that almost seemed to be pleading with her for help, and knew she couldn't bring herself to leave without trying to free him.

She ran across the ice toward him, turned her back to him and swung her hind legs up, slamming her back hooves into the ice surrounding him. Unfortunately when she brought her back legs up, her front hooves once again slipped on the ice and once again she sprawled on her stomach.

She pushed herself back up onto her hooves and took several deep breaths as if bracing herself for something. Then as Discord watched, she pulled off her coat, thus freeing her wings, and flew up into the air out of his sight. Then she shot down toward him, slamming her back against his ice prison. Discord couldn't see her do it but he could feel the faint vibrations from her blow traveling through the ice. Fluttershy flew up and came down again, striking the same area and trying to ignore the cold now seeping into her body without her coat. It was a bit warmer in the cave than it was outside but not much.

Fluttershy tried flying in again and striking the ice this time from a different angle. She flew about and kicked the ice again and again until both her legs and wings were trembling from exertion. She landed in front of Discord and sat bent over with her head down and her sides heaving. Finally she raised her head to study her work ... and felt her heart sink. Her efforts had barely put a shallow dent in the ice. She knew her kicks could never hope to compare with Rainbow Dash's in terms of speed nor with Applejack's in terms of strength, but it still felt like a slap in the face when she was forced to view her poor results.

Pushing herself onto her feet again, she narrowed her eyes before flying up and delivering another kick to Discord's prison. She kept sending kick after kick after kick until once again she could barely stay in the air. This time she landed stretched out across Discord's ice-encased back and lay there, breathing hard.

Inside the ice, Discord could feel Fluttershy's heart crashing wildly against his back as if it might burst. Finally it slowed down a bit and then Fluttershy was flying again, gearing up for another round. Frozen in place, Discord could only watch in amazement as again and again, she would try to break the ice around him, then drop to the ground and try to recover. At first all that flying and kicking seemed to help keep the pony warm, but now he could see that the combination of cold temperatures and heavy exercise was beginning to take its toll on her. Every time she went down Discord was sure that that time she wouldn't be getting back up and yet each time she somehow managed to.

Crouching on trembling legs, she flapped her wings yet again. She lifted into the air and was level with Discord's shoulder when her wings suddenly seemed to lock up and she fell back to the ground. She landed with her body draped across his reptile foot. She tried to move her wings but was just rewarded with painful spasms for her trouble. She tried to stand but her limbs felt so heavy she could barely move them.

"I'm sorry," she panted, not sure if he could hear her but still feeling the need to say it. Tears leaked from her eyes, forming an icy crust on her lashes. She'd done all she could to try and free him and it hadn't been enough. _Please, let me last just a little longer. Just to get him out._

Then the foot underneath her twitched.

Then it jerked up and off the ground, taking her with it. She sailed a short distance before landing with a painful _oof!_ Looking up she saw small thin cracks traveling up the ice that covered Discord. His legs were already free and the ice was breaking off the rest of his body in many chunks.

_It worked!_ Fluttershy mentally cheered, not expecting that last little prayer to be answered to quickly if at all. _It worked! It worked! It worked! He's free now—_suddenly her silent cheering stopped. She had felt bad for him when he was trapped, but now as the ice continued to crumble off him, all the memories of the past several days with him came rushing back. And she had just freed that thing to let it loose in her life again! What had she been thinking?

She tried to force herself to her hooves but collapsed back to the ground before she'd even managed to get them underneath her. More tears dripped from her eyes to join the ones already frozen in her lashes at the realization that she was going to die in this cave. She was so cold she could barely feel her body, every breath hurt, and she didn't even have the strength to crawl to her coat much less trek all the way back to the cabin. As she lay, trying to force the icy air into her lungs she realized with a sort of dull surprise that she wasn't afraid to die. She was simply too exhausted to feel afraid or to feel much of anything else. All she seemed to have the energy for was sorrow. Sorrow that she had failed in her task for the Apple family, sorrow that she hadn't had a chance to make things right with Ponyville, and sorrow that she'd thrown her life away trying to save a creature that wouldn't even care.

_Would you have rather lived knowing you left him trapped in that ice?_

_No,_ she thought. In spite of how he'd treated her, her heart, her stupid, soft, idiotic heart had refused to let her abandon him. She remembered how the draconequus had scoffed at her kindness. Maybe he had been right. After all, look where it had gotten her.

But none of these sorrows came close to the grief she felt at the knowledge that none of her friends were nearby. She wondered if they would ever discover her body. If they did, would the cold have preserved it, or would her corpse have started rotting by the time somepony stumbled across it? Or would her disappearance be like Applejack's? Would her friends spend the rest of their lives never knowing what had happened to her body and having to accept that she was dead due to the fact that searching all of Equestria had turned up no trace of her? The thought of leaving them like that with no closure pained her more than any of the physical cold around her could have. She wondered if Applejack had had these very same thoughts in her last moments. Had the earth pony even had time to think of such things before her life had been snuffed out?

_I guess I'll find out the answer to that soon enough, Applejack, because it looks like I'll be joining you,_ was Fluttershy's penultimate thought.

Her final one was: _I wish I could have seen the rest of my friends just one last time._

Then the darkness closed over her completely.

Deep in unconsciousness, she didn't feel the mismatched hands as they lifted her from the ground.

* * *

**Well, that's it for this chapter. Hope that's not too mean of a cliffhanger to leave you guys on.**


	8. Chapter 7

**Well, after leaving you guys on that cliffhanger, I feel I owe you a nice big fat chapter so here's my longest one yet. (I might go back and rewrite this chapter when the story is done, because it feels a little clunky in some places to me. I'm not sure exactly how or why, but it does. If it seems clunky to you guys as well, I'd appreciate any suggestions on improving it. Thanks.)**

**Regarding BrooklynLeaf's review: Actually "cropped" was the correct word for that sentence. It's another way of saying "grew", "sprouted" or, I suppose "popped". But once again thanks for keeping an eye out for any typos I might have missed. As for Fluttershy and Discord's relationship, don't worry. I put this story in the Romance category as well as the Mystery one so I intend to deliver. Never let it be said that the Shark is guilty of false advertising. Plus, sadistic as I can sometimes get as a writer, I'm a big sap-head at heart and I like MLP's resident Odd Couple as much as any Fluttercord fan.**

* * *

Chapter 7

"_But I confess my sins; I am deeply sorry for what I have done."—Psalm 38:18_

* * *

As Fluttershy collapsed across Discord's foot, he could feel her heartbeat and it was much more erratic than when he'd felt it earlier. He heard her straining to get back on her feet only to collapse again. Then he heard her murmured apology and he would have swung his head down to stare at her if he could have moved.

_It's not your fault,_ he found himself thinking to her. _You did the best you could._

Then Fluttershy's heartbeat seemed to slow and the last of her body heat seemed to flow through the ice toward him. Her earlier blows had put shallow scrapes and dents in the ice but hadn't managed to fully penetrate it. Now that last tiny bit of heat suddenly seemed to punch through the ice like an ice pick and Discord felt the ice imprisoning his foot crack! At the realization that they could now move again, his foot claws twitched spasmodically. Then, as if that first crack had set off a chain reaction the rest of the ice around him, starting at his legs and traveling up, began breaking as well. As the ice around his legs shattering, he swung his right foot up and off the ice, forgetting for the moment that there was a pony lying across it. He repeated the process with his other leg, then twisted his body as one would a towel to wring it out, feeling the ice break away from him in large chunks.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fluttershy once again trying to stand, only to once again slump face-down on the ice. Then looking down, the draconequus saw that once again the ice was creeping toward him! He shot into the air so fast he slammed his head into the cave ceiling. His horn and antler got stuck in the ceiling so he detached them from his skull, yanked them free from the ceiling, and jammed them back on his head. Looking back down, he saw that the new layer of ice had closed over where he'd been standing just seconds ago. And it was now creeping toward where Fluttershy lay.

Without thinking about what he was doing, Discord whirled his long body around and darted back to the ground, scooping Fluttershy into his arms. Grabbing her coat up with his tail, he brought it around and hastily bundled it around her like a blanket before teleporting the both of them out of the cave.

He was so intent on getting them out of there that he overshot the distance to the cabin and they appeared on top of it rather than inside it. He'd barely had time to register this when a strong wind yanked him off his feet and sent him spinning through the air. As large snowflakes pelted him, he thought he caught glimpses of ghostly pony-like shapes but they were so faint and moved by so quickly that he couldn't be sure. The wind buffeted him this way and that, and Fluttershy was almost torn out of his arms. Squeezing her tight against his chest, he tried to teleport them inside the cabin and this time he succeeded.

They went tumbling across the floor and ended up in front of the fireplace. Discord dumped Fluttershy on the floor, sat up, and snapped his fingers, causing a fire to roar up from the fireplace. Making his coat and scarf disappear, he flashed himself into a standing position in front of the fire and turned his back to it, writhing ecstatically as the fire melted the snow that had gotten both trapped in his fur and stuck to his scales. He moaned as it sent waves of heat running up and down his back. His dragon tattoo seemed to relax and stretch across his body like a lizard basking in the sun. Then he turned to face the fire so he would get done all over, and stood there until steam had started curling up from him fur. Feeling much better, he stepped back and looked over at Fluttershy.

The pony hadn't moved from the spot where he'd dumped her. Her padded coat had flopped off and she was curled in a loose ball, trembling. She did not react when he approached her, so he put his foot on her side, intending to roll her over. But as soon as he touched her, his eyes widened and he jerked his foot back. The pony's body was as icy cold as the world outside had been!

Crouching down closer to her, he reached out his paw, this time ready for the cold, and pushed Fluttershy onto her side before quickly withdrawing his paw again. All this time the pony's eyes stayed shut. Now on her side, she tried to curl up again, still shivering.

As he gazed down at her, a strange heavy feeling settled on Discord's heart. It was a sensation he could never remember feeling before but he knew where it had come from. It had come from the knowledge that Fluttershy would never have gone out in that blizzard if it hadn't have been for him; that she wouldn't be in her current condition if it hadn't have been for him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a white shape moving and looked up to see Angel hopping over to where Fluttershy lay. The old bunny patted at the pony's head, repeatedly pulling his paw back as quickly as Discord had. Then he fixed his cloudy eyes on the draconequus in a disapproving scowl. If he had tried that a few days ago, Discord would probably have turned him into a cookie jar, but now the draconequus just looked away guiltily. When he chanced a glance back, he saw Angel disappearing into Fluttershy's room. A minute later the bunny reappeared, lugging the blanket from her bed. With a snap of his talons, Discord flashed the blanket away from Angel and onto Fluttershy. He'd done it partly in hopes of annoying Angel, but the bunny just seemed to ignore him and began tucking the blanket more securely around his owner. Rankled at this, Discord picked up Fluttershy, blanket and all, and moved to set her in front of the fire. He could feel her shivering through the blanket and he held her out as arms' length, not wanting her cold body to touch him even through the blanket. He placed her right where he'd been standing earlier so she could get the full benefit of the fire's heat and stepped back to study her.

As he gazed at her it began to sink in that he was now in an awkward situation. She'd risked her life to rescue him, something nopony had ever done before. Granted he couldn't remember the last time he'd ever been in a situation where he'd needed to be rescued but that didn't change the fact that he was now in her debt.

He shut his eyes and pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose. "What have I gotten myself into?" he muttered. He wanted to get back to his plans to take back Equestria, but if he did that now his triumph would later be marred by the fact that he owed his freedom to Fluttershy. On the one hoof, there was a wonderful sense of irony in the idea that in freeing him, Fluttershy had essentially helped hand Equestria over to him.

_But by accepting that I might just as well admit that I can't conquer Equestria on my own without outside help. And I can!_ he thought to himself, mentally shouting the last bit for emphasis. Then a new idea popped into his head: He would pay off his debt to Fluttershy and as soon as they were even, he could cheerfully go back to planning his hostile takeover!

_But how do you plan to pay her back?_

He looked back over at Fluttershy, who currently looked like little more than a dark shivering lump silhouetted against the fire. He flashed closer to her, startling Angel who had been crouching beside her, and lifted the blanket to examine her. The blanket felt warm and toasty, but underneath it Fluttershy's body still felt as cold as it had earlier. Frowning, he snapped several more blankets into existence and wrapped them around her as well.

As he stepped back again, his thoughts returned to the matter of paying off his debt. Just tending to her like this didn't feel like it qualified. What else could he do?

Then he remembered the reason Fluttershy had tried to contact Twilight in the first place. He snapped his talons and the stacks of Apple family documents flashed into the room. At the sight of them, he fought the urge to groan. Going through those documents was not going to be fun but the sooner he got started, the sooner he'd be done, and the sooner he'd be done, the sooner he could get back to the fun stuff. With a flick of one of his talons, he sent several pages swooping up into the air where he could look at them more easily. His eyes zipped back and forth over them while his hands flexed and flourished as if molding an invisible mound of clay.

After several minutes, he decided to take a break from absorbing information to check once again on Fluttershy. Angel had climbed on top of the blankets covering her and had fallen asleep there. Discord absently flashed the bunny back into its bed, not in the mood to deal with it waking up and glaring at him, even if such a reaction normally brought a smirk to his face.

The extra blankets hadn't made the slightest difference. The outside ones had been heated just fine but none of that heat seemed to have reached Fluttershy.

_Maybe she needs something warm closer to her,_ he thought, conjuring several hot water bottles and shoving them underneath the blankets with her before going back to studying the documents. Several minutes later, he checked on her yet again.

The hot water bottles had all gone cold and Fluttershy was still shivering away. Seeing this, Discord was sorely tempted to stomp off in a rage.

"You're doing this just to annoy me aren't you?!" he snapped at the shivering pegasus. "Stupid pony," he muttered.

_That stupid pony in the reason you're in here instead of still out there stuck in that ice,_ a little mocking voice in his head pointed out. Discord sighed and crouched down next to Fluttershy again. He put his eagle claw under her chin and turned her face to study it. He could feel her jaw vibrating as her teeth chattered, and she still felt as cold as she had the last time he'd checked, but this time he kept his claw on her face regardless of how unpleasant it felt.

_What am I doing wrong?_ he mentally asked her shivering face. _Why can't I get you to warm up? I give you a fire, blankets, and hot water bottles. What more do I have to... _Suddenly another possibility occurred to him.

_Oh no! I am not doing that!_ He yanked his claw away from her and crossed his arms over his chest, shaking his head like a stubborn foal. _No, no, no, no! I won't do it! You can't make me!_

Then he made the mistake of looked back down at Fluttershy's pathetic, shivering form. He groaned. _All right, I'll do it._ He crooked a finger and the blankets all rose up into the air. Grimacing, he dropped to the floor, slithered across it to Fluttershy and coiled his body around and around hers. Gritting his teeth and wishing he was doing almost anything else, he tried to get reasonably comfortable considering it felt like he was coiled around a soft vibrating block of ice.

He cocked an eyebrow. Now that was an idea: Ice cubes that looked like regular old ice but felt soft and squishy to the touch. Imagine dumping a load of those on ponies and seeing their reactions when they expected to be hit with something hard and got something soft instead. And for that matter why would the ice cubes have to be cold? They could be warm instead. _Hmm. I'm going to have to remember that one, _he thought, mentally filing the idea away for later use.

But this thought could only temporarily distract him from the unpleasant coldness now pressed against him. So to get his mind on something else he began working his way through more of the Apple family documents. That worked for a bit as well, but eventually the cold emanating from Fluttershy's body began to gnaw at him like an itch. He'd gotten through a good-sized chunk of the documents before the cold finally became too strong to ignore. He sent the last page he'd been reading into the finished stack and twisted his neck around to glare at the pony that had remained stubbornly cold despite all his efforts to warm her.

"What more do you want from me?!" he demanded. "Do you want me to admit I was stupid to go out there? Is that what it's going to take? Fine! I admit it! I was stupid for going out when you said it was a bad idea! This whole stupid situation is all my fault! There! Happy?!" Fluttershy just remained unconscious and shivering, and yelling at her hadn't felt nearly as satisfying as he'd thought it would. He sighed and spoke in a softer voice. "Look, Fluttershy, I…" he stopped, suddenly unsure of what to say. "I ... I'm-sorry-this-happened!" He winced. Ooh, saying that had hurt. Swallowing, he tried to get the rest out. "I guess ... what I'm trying to say is ... I don't want you to die because you came out to rescue me." Hearing himself say it out loud, he realized that it was surprisingly true. He had no problem tricking, brainwashing or otherwise manipulating ponies, but he didn't want this one's death on his conscious. It was strange, even to him, but that didn't make it any less true.

Unsure of what else to do or say, he reached over and placed a paw on her shivering brow as if bestowing a blessing and, trying to express all the regret he was feeling, whispered. "Please don't die because of what you did for me."

He couldn't tell if Fluttershy could hear him but then he noticed a sudden change in her breathing. It had gone from shuddering respirations to quick shallow puffs as if something was keeping her from being able to breathe any deeper. Discord's eyes widened in alarm and he moved his paw from her forehead to her throat, thinking to check if something was blocking it, when Fluttershy's head suddenly lulled back and her shivering lessened. For a brief terrible moment, he thought she had died, but then his paw, which was still on her throat, felt a steady pulse. He used both his hands to cup her face and examine it. She still felt cold, and shivers still racked her body but they were not as bad as they had been earlier and her teeth no longer chattered. Then he noticed that her body no longer seemed quite as cold as it had earlier. Loosening his coils, he reached into them and pressed the back of his eagle claw against her side, to make sure that the cold hadn't just numbed his body and fooled him.

No, he had not been fooled. Her body was definitely getting warmer. Withdrawing his claw, he tightened his coils back around her. He wasn't sure why sharing his own body heat seemed to be working when nothing else had but he didn't intend to leave her until she'd completely stopped shivering.

Waving a claw toward the Apple Family documents he continued going through them.

* * *

Several hours later, Discord flicked the last paper into the finished pile and let his head flop down to the floor on top of his crossed arms. "Whew! Finally."

Then he noticed that Fluttershy was no longer shivering. Shortening his coils, he settled his shoulders against the floor so that Fluttershy's head was resting on his chest. Looking down at her, he saw that she was fast asleep, her breathing deep and regular. Gently putting his paw to her forehead he found that it was now pleasantly warm.

"Mmmm." Still asleep, she rubbed her cheek against his chest and stroked his fur with a hoof.

An involuntary smile twitched across Discord's mouth at the sensation. He'd been debating whether to go put her in her bed or to keep her in front of the fire which had burned down to glowing coals. Now he decided to do both. With a snap of his fingers, her bed materialized underneath the two of them, and with another snap the blankets (which until that point he had left floating in the air) lowered to settle over them. Discord shifted enough so that he could drape an arm over Fluttershy, conjured a pillow for himself, and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

When the sky outside lightened from a pitch black to a medium gray, Fluttershy woke to find herself wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and wondering where she was. She saw fat snowflakes swirling against the cabin window and remembered vaguely being out where it was so terribly cold but the current warmth was making her brain feel sluggish and she couldn't seem to recall much more than that. Plus, she was currently much too comfortable to get up. When she put her head back down, her cheek pressed against something furry that was rising and falling in time with the sound of someone's deep peaceful breathing. Then her sluggish mind registered the fact that there was an arm draped across her withers. Maybe she'd taken shelter with Harry the bear...

Then the warm tunnel around her shifted slightly and she felt the arm across her withers slide farther around her until its hand came into view. Looking down at it, all her vague dreaminess vanished when she saw that the arm was a scaly yellow eagle's limb with a barbed tattoo around its wrist. Looking back up, she now noticed a long gray neck draped over a large pillow that prevented her from seeing the head attached to that neck. But she didn't need to see his head to know who that neck belonged to. Twisting around to look at her body, she realized to her horror that it was wrapped in furry serpentine coils that could only by Discord's.

Fighting against her rising panic, she put her hooves against one of the coils and tried to squeeze her way out of it. Scarcely had she started then there was a loud snort above her head and Discord's body suddenly shifted so that the length she'd been lying on was now beside her rather than under her. Before she could pull herself free of his coils, his arm suddenly tightened around her, pinning her upper forelegs to her sides. She froze as his neck curled around on the pillow and brought his head close to hers. He grunted, flicked an ear causing the earrings in it to jangle slightly ... and slept on.

Fluttershy slowly let out the breath she'd been holding, relieved that she hadn't woken him up. Though there was still the mystery of how they had ended up in this uncomfortably close proximity…

She watched his face for any sign that he might be waking up but saw none. Up until that moment, she'd never really had opportunity to actually study his face in great detail. Looking at him now, she noticed that the rings puncturing his lower lip, nose, and nostril, the studs hooked through his shaggy eyebrows, and the multiple earrings looped through his ears all seemed to have been rammed through their respective flesh in a way specifically designed to look painful. Before she could give much thought to this observation, one of his eyelids suddenly twitched and she froze, waiting to see if it would open. It didn't, but it did remind her that she needed to get away from him before he woke up.

She tried to pull her forelegs out from under his pinning arm. Finally she got them free and began using them to try and lift his arm enough for her to wiggle out from under it. Her hooves pressed against the bicep of his eagle arm with its jaggedly barbed tattooed loop, and as she pushed at it, her hooves parted the fur, allowing her to clearly see the ink scratched deep into the skin below. Like with the piercings on his face, the tattooing looked as if it had hurt, and she couldn't help wondering what had possessed him to markup his already hard-to-overlook body in this manner.

Suddenly one of Discord's eyes popped open behind her. "Good morning," he said cheerfully.

Fluttershy froze. "Um, good morning?" she said uneasily. She'd come to realize that whenever Discord sounded that cheerful it always meant bad news.

"How are you feeling?" he asked and to her surprise he actually sounded like he genuinely wanted to know rather than like he was mocking her.

"I—" she broke off as the events of last night all came rushing back: going out in the blizzard, finding Discord in that cave, trying to break him out of the ice, believing herself done for... But then how had she gotten back here? Had—?

She looked up to meet Discord's yellow eyes. "Did... did you bring me back here?"

"Not only did I, but I did," he said, propping his head up on his lion paw and lifting his eagle arm off her. He didn't seem to be in any hurry to start messing with her so Fluttershy wondered if maybe she could get a chance to make sense of at least a few of the Apple Family documents before he decided to resume tormenting her. Oh, she was really starting to regret worrying about him enough to go out after him.

She began wiggling out of his coils. "Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Really I do. But I really have to go through those records. Please excuse me." She leapt to her feet ... only to have her legs give out from under her.

"Oh, there's no rush," Discord said, studying his talons before flashing himself into a standing position beside the bed. Reaching over, he pulled the four or five blankets over Fluttershy, tucking them around her so that just her head was poking out.

"No, I can't wait." Fluttershy said, struggling out of the blankets. "I have to—" With a great effort she pushed herself into a sitting position…and with very little effort, Discord pushed her back down.

"You stay there." he said, holding her down with a finger against her chest.

She tried to push his paw away. "But the records—"

"Already taken care of."

She stopped struggling. "Wh-what?"

He took his finger off her chest and moved to prop his left arm on the bed's headboard. "Watch this," he said, snapping the fingers of his lion paw.

The wood ceiling above them seemed to bubble as if it were made of liquid. Then a large portion of it descended, looking like an upside-down tree stump. This "tree stump" then proceeded to sprout branches. The branches spread out to cover most of the ceiling. Apples stared growing on most of those branches. In the space of just a few minutes it looked as if someone had removed the cabin's roof and jammed an uprooted apple tree upside-down in its place.

Fluttershy looked from the tree to Discord in confusion. "What is this for?" she started to ask when Discord suddenly stretched his arm over her and reached up toward the tree. Instead of stretching his arm the way she or any other pony would stretch their foreleg out to reach something, his arm literally got longer as if it were made of a rubber band. He snapped an apple off one of the branches and, retracting his arm back to its more usual length, dropped the apple in Fluttershy's lap. Looking down at it, she saw an image of Applejack on its shiny red skin. Discord reached down and gave the top of the apple a sharp smack with his paw. The apple broke into two neat halves and Fluttershy could now see a much clearer picture of Applejack in one of them as if the apple were some sort of giant locket. Her hooves automatically put the two halves back together and they joined seamlessly becoming a single apple again. Then she pulled experimentally at the apple's sides and it split into two neat halves again. Looking back up at the tree she now noticed that all the apples had similar images of ponies on them.

"This," Discord said, jerking his head in the direction of the tree. "is our new version of the Apple Family Tree. All the information in those documents is up there." He raised a paw and seemed to be studying its claws. "I figure that as we eliminate suspects, we can pluck their apples off there, and by the time we're down to one apple, we'll have found our murderer."

This statement was greeted with silence and when Discord turned his head enough to look at Fluttershy, she was sitting there, gaping at him, her expression clearly saying: _Who are you and what have you done with Discord?_

He mentally chuckled. _Oh, I haven't done anything with him, my dear. I can assure you he's still right here, right where I'm—_

"You did this for me?" she asked softly, and Discord suddenly lost his train of mentally gloating thought as he realized he'd misread her expression.

He let out a quick cough as if clearing his throat. "Of course." He coughed again, trying to maintain his composure. "I just started looked through those papers and I got a little curious and I thought this would be easier to work with—" His rambling broke off as Fluttershy suddenly reached over and grabbed his paw in both her hooves.

"Thank you for making this," she said, letting go of his paw with one hoof to gesture toward the tree. Deep down part of her felt that this might all be some kind of cruel joke he was engineering, but she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt because that's what she would have wanted herself when dealing with others. "This will be so much easier to work with than just those stacks of paper," she continued, lowering her hoof to grasp his paw again. "I really can't thank you enough for it."

Discord had gone completely motionless at her touch. Physical contact was nothing new to him, when interacting with other creatures he seldom kept his hands to himself, but up until now he had always been the initiator. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had willingly reached out and touched him except possibly to smack him away. Certainly nothing like the way Fluttershy was holding his paw now.

Not knowing how to deal with this new feeling, he tried changing the subject. "You're probably hungry. I'll get you some soup."

With that he flashed out of her grasp and into the kitchen. Three more flashes and the stove was lit, a pot of soup was sitting on it, and a floating ladle was stirring said soup. He could have just conjured a bowl of hot soup for her right there beside the bed but he had wanted an excuse to get away from her a few minutes to collect his thoughts.

He raised his paw in front of his face and flexed the fingers as if to make sure Fluttershy's touched hadn't changed it in some way. Then remembering the surprise and gratitude he'd heard in her voice, his paw dropped to his chest to rub at it as he tried to understand the new sensation filling it. The closest thing he could think of to compare it to was when he'd been ruling Equestria and remaking it as he chose, but even that comparison didn't quite fit. He let the soup stir itself, paying just enough attention to it to keep it from sloshing while he continued to ponder his feelings.

Thinking back over his life, he realized that he could recall no instance when he'd used his magic solely for someone else's benefit. Anything he'd done had been for his own enjoyment and he had never cared one way or the other whether anyone else liked it or not. Then again he'd never been in anypony's debt before either. It had always been him against the rest of Equestria with the rest of Equestria decidedly outclassed.

But last night he had started going through those records not for his own pleasure but to try and even things up between himself and Fluttershy. He'd gone in expecting to hate every second of it, but when he'd come up with that idea for the Apple Family Tree constructing it from the information in those documents had turned out to be ... surprisingly painless.

Plus, reluctant as he was to admit it, reading up on the family really had hooked his interest. They seemed so close that the idea of one of them being a murderer that had managed to hide all trace of the crime and spent the next ten years taunting an old pony about it just didn't seem to fit ... just didn't seem to make sense.

_Thought you liked things that way, _that little voice in his head taunted.

His brows pulled down in an annoyed frown. Sure, he did like when things didn't make sense, but on his terms. And the fact that this case had managed to baffle several ponies without his involvement made him feel insulted, as if this killer was encroaching on his territory, or cutting into his business.

Yes, that was it! He just didn't want this killer taking his title of Confusion-Causer. That was all.

Really that was all.

* * *

***snort* Yeah, Discord. Keep telling yourself that.**

**One of the things I've wondered about with Discord in the cartoon is if some other character started causing chaos without any help from him, would he sit back and enjoy it or be like "Hey, knock it off! You're stomping on my turf!" (The stuff in episodes 1&2 of Season 4 doesn't count because he was still technically behind that.) I'm honestly not sure which direction he'd go, but I went with the second because I felt it fit this particular story better.**

**And Fluttershy, I can tell you what possessed him to mark up his body like that. The fact that the Shark wanted the story's title to work. Yes, folks, I admit it. I wish I had a better reason for messing with Discord's appearance, but really the only reason those alterations are there is to make the title work.**

**Well, now that the Odd Couple is more or less on the same page, they can finally get down to actually solving Applejack's disappearance.**

**Unfortunately I'm afraid the next chapter will take a bit longer than my roughly-a-chapter-a-week schedule to post as I have some other commitments to take care of over the next couple of weeks and less time to write. Don't worry though. The fact that you guys have left reviews saying you're eager to see where this story goes helps spur me on and I will update as soon as I can. I just need you guys to be a bit patient over the next couple of weeks like you were with me last time. Thanks.**


	9. Chapter 8

**Whew! These suckers just keep getting longer.**

**I intended for this chapter to mostly concentrate on the mystery but I think it ended up being a bit more character-focused then I'd originally expected. I'm trying to find that balance between the two so please let me know if you feel I need more or less of one or the other. Thanks.**

**Oh, and in response to a Guest reviewer's question: Have you ever read **_**Bride of Discord **_**or seen the audio drama series?**

**A: Yes to both. As a matter of fact, that's kind of where I got the idea for this story. You see, a couple of years back when **_**The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo **_**(TGwtDT) was popular I picked it up to see what all the fuss was about. As it turns out, I didn't like the book and wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but I did feel it had a fairly decent plot and some interesting ideas. Then I watched "Keep Calm and Flutter On" and for some odd reason Fluttershy and Discord's relationship suddenly made me think of the one between journalist Mikael Blomkvist and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander in TGwtDT. I don't know why it made me think of them since the two couples have next to nothing in common, but it did. Then sometime after that I stumbled across the **_**Bride of Discord**_** fanfic, read it, and the way DisneyFanatic used the whole Beauty and the Beast story got me thinking: "If someone can retell Beauty and the Beast MLP-style with Fluttershy and Discord in the main roles, what if someone tried to do the same with TGwtDT?" And from there the idea just kind of took on a life of its own until I finally caved in and started writing the silly thing. Also in terms of content, I guess you might say this story is kind of like a "Disneyfied" version of TGwtDT. Except of course with ponies, and as you've probably already guessed from the title, the character Discord is standing in for was a girl in the original story, and by extension the one Fluttershy is standing in for was a guy. (Insert Flutterguy joke of choice here.)**

* * *

Chapter 8

"_As iron sharpens iron, so one friend sharpens another."—Proverbs 27:17_

* * *

After Discord disappeared, Fluttershy lay back in the bed, pulled the blankets back over herself, and gazed up at the apple-studded web of branches that had replaced the cabin's ceiling. She thought back on what Discord had said about picking those apples off the tree until they were down to Applejack's killer. Seeing the various ponies' pictures up there helped drive home the fact that behind one of those cheerful faces was a murderer in a way that the paper documents hadn't been able to.

Ponies weren't always what they appeared to be. You just couldn't judge a book by its cover.

Speaking of not judging a book by its cover...

Now her thoughts drifted to her unusual housemate. Last night as she'd lain shivering on that icy cave floor, fighting to remain conscious, she'd wished against all hope that she might be rescued. Based on Discord's behavior when he'd first arrived, she'd never even considered that he might lift a finger to help her. But contrary to what she'd expected of him, he'd brought her back with him, and tended to her while she was helpless. He'd even sounded concerned when he'd asked how she was feeling earlier...but what if that attitude was just an act to soften her up for a cruel blow later?

_He probably just didn't want to lose his toy,_ the small cynical voice in her head warned.

_But what if he really has changed?_ another small voice asked.

Fluttershy remembered how once, in an attempt to be more assertive, she'd spoken cruelly to Pinkie Pie and Rarity reducing them to the point of tears, but despite this they had been quick to forgive her when she'd apologized later. How would she have felt if her apology and attempt to later make things right had just been met with suspicion?

_That was different! You just got carried away and shot off your mouth. You didn't really mean to hurt Rarity and Pinkie Pie that badly. Discord on the other hoof has been intentionally try to hurt you over the past several days and he's enjoyed it!_

But hadn't she enjoyed the sense of power that had come with shoving other ponies around? Yes, at first she had, but she'd later regretted her actions. If that had been the case with her, was it so impossible that Discord could feel that way as well and was now trying to make amends?

_And what if he's just lying about putting the information from those documents into the apples up there? _the cynical voice challenged. _They're probably as empty as the one with Applejack in it._

_There's only one way to find out about that,_ Fluttershy thought as she gathered her strength and flew up to the tree branches to examine the apples more closely. She flew to an apple with Braeburn's picture on it and smacked it the way she'd seen Discord do with the Applejack one. The apple broke in half and she saw the picture of Braeburn in one half. In the other half was a list of biographical information. She brushed her hoof over the information and seemed to scroll down to reveal more. Closing the apple, she moved to check several others and saw that they all too had information in them.

Fluttershy was a firm believer in the idea of treating others the way you yourself wanted to be treated. It was one of the reasons she generally tried to be as soft-spoken and non-confrontational as possible. Now as she closed the apple she was holding, she thought to herself: _Maybe Discord is planning to hurt me later...but I'm going to take my chances and give him the benefit of the doubt._

* * *

Over the next several days, the weather got steadily worse, but inside the cabin things were much better between Fluttershy and Discord. Fluttershy would have preferred to have earned the draconequus's aid in a less drastic way but she couldn't complain about the results.

One day when she had finally gotten her strength back, Discord appeared next to her on the bed, magically stretching it in both directions to make room for the two of them, and got right down to business.

"Now, the way I see it, this case has six questions we need to answer: what, where, when, who, how, and why. We've already got the answers to the first three.

"Number 1. What are we trying to solve? Applejack's death and disappearance.

"Number 2. When did it happen? Ten years ago during her family reunion.

"Number 3. Where did it happen? Here on this farm."

He grinned. "How about that. We're already half way there. Now, to answer our last three questions, we have to go through our list of suspects aka her family members and figure out which of them killed her. That's our main goal but to get there we also have to figure out how they managed to kill her and cover it up, and why did they do it in the first place."

Fluttershy could only gape at him. She would have expected a neat little break down of the mystery from someone like Twilight, but not from this chaotic creature.

Discord cocked an eyebrow at her. "What? Do I have something on my face?"

Fluttershy blushed and looked away, embarrassed to be caught staring at him. "No—I mean, yes—I mean—"

"Something stuck in my teeth?" the draconequus asked, pulling out his fang and making a show of examining it under a microscope.

"No, it's just that... well, I, um..." trying to find the right words to say, she fidgeted as he shoved his fang back in while watching her out of the corner of his eye. "I just didn't expect you to say something so...um...logical."

Discord roared with laughter, and rolled right off the bed, clutching his stomach and kicking his legs in the air. Fluttershy wasn't really sure what he found so hilarious. After several seconds he sat up, took one look at her face, and went into another bout of laughing.

"Oh, your face," he chuckled. Finally he got his laughing under control and said, "You do realize one must be well-versed in the ways of logic in order to break them in every possible way." In his mind he added, _And if that's the sort of reaction I'd get, maybe I should play the logic card a little more often. Might help up my unpredictability and really keep you ponies guessing._

"I suppose that makes sense," said Fluttershy and Discord winced as if she'd just said something obscene.

"Back to business," he said, flashing himself back onto the bed beside her. "We need to 'prune down' our suspect list." A pair of oversized garden shears appeared in his hands. "Now, I doubt the killer would be anypony that died before the reunion or was born after it, so any Apples that fall into either of those categories can all go." Shifting the shears to his eagle claw, he allowed them to vanish in a flash of light before snapping the fingers on his lion paw. Immediately several of the apples on the ceiling exploded in clouds of pink smoke. The smoke from each of those clouds spread outward and some of it washed over the two detectives, morphing into splatters of whipped cream when it touched them.

"Um, it might have been simpler to just pick them off the branches," Fluttershy suggested tentatively.

"Spoilsport," Discord muttered but his tone was light and joking. He swiped a finger through the whipped cream on Fluttershy's head as if skimming the icing off a cake. Fluttershy wiped the cream from her face, and licked it off her hooves. Admittedly, it didn't taste half bad but she didn't look forward to trying to wash it out of her mane. As she was thinking this, she suddenly felt a breeze on her skull and gasped. Her mane!

After licking the whipped cream from his fingers, Discord had reached back down and removed her mane from her head as easily as if it had been a wig. Now he was using it to towel the whipped cream off himself!

"Discord," she pleaded, blushing crimson, and trying to cover her now-bald head with her hooves. He just winked at her, and began twisting her mane into a thick pink rope before snapping it up at the ceiling like a whip.

"Hooves down," he ordered cheerfully, as he started flapping the detached mane in front of him like a bed sheet. Fluttershy shot him a look of anguish and his grin slipped several notches as he felt that same uncomfortable guilty twinge in his chest. He turned himself over onto his stomach in midair and brought his head down closer to hers. "Please put them down?" he asked, locking eyes with her.

Fluttershy hesitated briefly, then, looking away from him and closing her eyes in shame, lowered her hooves. Discord swooped around behind her and carefully put her mane back on her head. Fluttershy's eyes popped open when she felt him fluffing her mane like a hair stylist. All traces of whipped cream had vanished from her mane. In fact, all traces of it had vanished from the rest of her body as well.

Even though she would have preferred not to have gotten covered in whipped cream, she did appreciate the fact that he'd cleaned things up after having his laugh as opposed to just leaving her to struggle with the results. He definitely wouldn't have done that when he'd first arrived.

* * *

Discord meanwhile was looking up at the tree branches, his fingers continuing to automatically fluff and comb through Fluttershy's mane. His method of removing several suspects from the list hadn't made nearly as big a dent in it as he'd expected. He went back to thinking of the how, who, and why questions of the case.

"How was she murdered?" he mused out loud. "That will be difficult to answer since we don't have a body to examine."

"Couldn't you just conjure her body for us examine?" Fluttershy asked even though the idea of it made her feel a bit queasy. She'd seen her share of dead animals but another pony, especially a close friend...

The draconequus shook his head. "Conjuring random objects and summoning an already existing object are different things. Summoning an already existing object takes less energy than conjuring up a brand new one but I tend to favor the conjuring method because I need to know where the object I'm trying to summon is.

"I could conjure up a copy of her corpse, but it wouldn't show us the cause of death since I don't know what she died of. And I can't summon her actual corpse since I don't know where it is. Even if I did, after ten years anything I summoned would probably be little more than dust."

Both detectives were silent for several seconds, realizing they'd hit a dead end, before Discord spoke up. "If we can't answer how, let's see what we can do with why. What reasons would there be to kill Applejack? Who benefits? What's her will say?"

"She...she never made one."

"Well, has anypony gotten any of her things?"

"No, I don't think so. I think most of her stuff is still in her room. I think some of her clothes were donated to charity, but that was about it. And none of her extended family bought any of those things."

"I see." Discord tapped his fingertips together as he studied the tree. "Hmm, how to narrow our search... how to narrow our search..." He looked down at Fluttershy and saw that she was holding the Applejack apple, which was empty save for a picture. "Hmm…Maybe we should stop looking at the suspects and start looking at our victim."

Fluttershy's head jerked up at the comment. "What do you mean?"

"I think we need to focus on Applejack instead of on all these ponies. Find out if she did something that prompted one of them to kill her."

Fluttershy had to admit she hadn't thought of that. She'd been sure she knew Applejack, and that the earth pony had had nothing to hide. She had represented honesty after all. Then again, Applejack hadn't told any of her friends about those apple peeling rosebuds she used to make. If she hadn't mentioned something as innocent as that, it didn't seem so impossible that she might have kept other things from them. But surely she would have confided in her friends if she'd found something big enough to drive another pony to kill her.

_Then again maybe she'd intended to tell us, but was killed before she could._

Outside the wind suddenly shrieked as if to say: "Hey! I'm still out here you know!"

Fluttershy glanced nervously out the window and as if sensing her thoughts, Discord wrapped an arm around her from behind and slipped the other under her hindquarters, so that she was sitting with her back against his chest. "We'll go this way."

Before Fluttershy could ask what way he was talking about, she was surrounded by a blinding flash of light. A second later the light vanished and they were in Applejack's room.

Suddenly Discord cried out in pain and dropped her. Fluttershy landed with an "oof!" on the floor and turned to see what had caused Discord to cry out. She saw him flailing about, his body stuck through the bed's headboard—No, wait! His body wasn't stuck through the headboard. The headboard was stuck through his body! Then he vanished in another flash of light and reappeared in front of her.

She pushed herself to her hooves. "Are you okay?" she asked, reaching a hoof toward him but hesitating to touch him, not sure if it might injure him farther.

The draconequus winced and rubbed his middle. "Oh, sure. I'll be fine in a bit. I've done that before. It hurts if you're not ready for it but it's not dangerous. At least not for me."

"You're sure?" Fluttershy asked, peering uncertainly at his now-intact middle.

Discord nodded, apparently fully recovered. "Yes, I'm sure. For me it's like getting a paper cut. It's not fatal but it's not too pleasant either."

Fluttershy lowered her hoof and looked up at him musingly. "Discord, may I ask you a question?"

"You just did."

"I mean besides that question."

Discord squinted one eye as if weighing the request before saying, "You may…If I ask you something as well. Don't answer my question and I won't answer yours. Quid pro quo."

"Quid pro—?"

"Quid pro quo. A question for a question, an answer for an answer, an eye for an—eh, better stop right there. Now, I'll pose my question first if you don't mind. Age before beauty you know."

Fluttershy laughed at that. She knew he was just joking, but deep down she couldn't help feeling a bit flattered that he'd put her in the beauty category. Even if it didn't really mean anything. "Go ahead."

"What's up with the tail extensions?"

Fluttershy blushed. She'd completely forgotten he knew about her tail extensions. "I didn't always have them. A couple of years back there was a storm and I was rescuing some baby mice, and a gate accidentally slammed on my tail...and part of it sort of fell off. My tail I mean. So I've been taking hair out of my mane and weaving it into what's left of my tail because it looks silly as just a stump."

Discord nodded thoughtfully. "And your question?"

"Well, I was just wondering...are you immortal?" Considering what she'd witnessed just a few minutes ago, she was pretty sure he was and just wanted to have her suspicions confirmed. But instead his answer surprised her.

"I don't know."

"Wha—how do you mean you don't know?"

He shrugged. "I'm the only one of my kind, so I can't exactly look up what the average draconequus lifespan is. I've been around for a long time," _Of course I spent a good thousand years of that time imprisoned in stone and you can't really age normally in that condition..._ "but I don't know if that means I'm immortal or just extremely long-lived? An adult mayfly only lives a few hours so as far as it's concerned one of you ponies might just as well be immortal but that doesn't mean you truly are. And I also don't know if it's possible for me to be killed, as I don't really care to find out." He paused a moment, then added, "The way I see it, I'm as young as I feel and I feel just fine, thank you very much." The words came out cheerfully enough, but Fluttershy thought she caught a hint of falsehood in them.

She tried to imagine being the only one of her kind. She tried to imagine going through life not knowing if she would eventually die or just keep going on forever. She'd never really thought that having a rough idea of one's lifespan could be a blessing before but now... "I'm sorry. That must be hard. Not knowing how long you'll live I mean."

"Forget it," Discord said brusquely. "Let's see if we can find some clues around here."

Fluttershy followed him, puzzled at his behavior. One second he seemed to soften toward her and the next he was pulling away and changing the subject.

Applejack's room had not been completely neglected but judging by the thin layer of dust that covered most of it, the rest of the family seldom entered it. As they started looking through Applejack's things, Fluttershy couldn't help feeling a bit mortified, as if she were somehow betraying her friend's trust, and because of this, deep down inside she also felt a tiny bit of relief that Discord seemed to have no such qualms. Hopefully he might spot any things she discomfort had kept her from noticing. Much to her surprise, Fluttershy had come to realize that Discord was surprisingly adept at spotting logical patterns in situations. He just preferred to tangle them up when he saw them rather than to point them out.

* * *

Finally they came to Applejack's bookshelf which contained some works of fiction and what appeared to be financial records. Discord squinted thoughtfully at the financial books. "Maybe she was cheating other ponies out of their money," he wondered aloud.

At that Fluttershy suddenly flew up in front of him, outraged. "She'd never do that!"

"Why not?" Discord smirked. "That whole honesty act would have been the perfect cover-up, so what makes you so sure she wouldn't use it to her advantage?"

"Because I know Applejack! She might not have been perfect but she believed in treating everypony she did business with fair-and-square!"

Discord raised his hands in surrender. He hadn't expected Fluttershy to defend Applejack's honor so fiercely, and he almost found himself feeling a bit jealous of the dead pony, that she could command that kind of devotion even though she'd ceased to exist a full decade ago.

"That may be the case," he said before flashing himself behind Fluttershy so that he was between her and the bookshelf. "But there might still be something hidden in one of these books. Look for anything that seems a bit out of place, an odd note, some underlined, or crossed out words, anything." With that he picked up one of the books, and began flipping through it, taking only a fraction of a second to look at the pages. Fluttershy hovered by him, trying to read over his shoulder, but he was turning the pages so fast she only caught a word or two on each of them. Discord closed the book and let it drop to the floor.

Fluttershy flew down, picked it up, and was about to look through it herself when Discord said, "Don't bother. It's just a list of cider customers. Nothing out of place in there. Try another book."

Fluttershy looked up at him suspiciously. "How do you know there's nothing out of place in this book? You just barely glanced at the pages."

"That's all that's in there," Discord snapped, turning and tossing another book over his shoulder toward her. She dropped the book she was holding and caught the new one reflexively. She stared up at the back of his head, wondering why he had suddenly gotten so testy with her. Then his dragon tattoo turned its head to face her, jerked its skull several times in the direction of its owner's head, and rolled its eyes before going back into its original position. Fluttershy bit down on the corners of her mouth to keep from laughing at the attitude the tattoo had displayed.

* * *

Discord kept his back to her as he tried to decide which book to investigate next. He wasn't sure what had prompted him to snap at her. Her question had been understandable and would have given him the perfect opportunity to brag about his abilities, so why had it bothered him?

Because he was still smarting from the way she'd defended Applejack from him earlier. He had been able to tell from Fluttershy's attitude that it had never even entered her head to question Applejack's integrity. That, coupled with the fact that she had felt the need to question his information as if his word couldn't be trusted had gotten under his skin as effectively as the ink that formed his tattoos.

_Why do you even care what she thinks of you? You've never cared what anypony has thought before._

_So what?! I'm entitled to change my mind. Isn't chaos synonymous with change anyway? Isn't—_

He shook his head. _I've got to stop going off on these stupid tangents. I don't care what she thinks of me! I don't! I don't! I don't! I'm just going to repay her by helping her find out who killed her friend, no more no less! Once that's done, we'll be even, and that will be the end of it._

He picked up another book, a western this time, and opened the front cover. He dipped his head down to put his face close to the book as if he were near-sighted. Fluttershy watched him, wondering why he didn't conjure a pair of reading glasses for himself if he was having trouble reading.

The draconequus had his pierced snout right up against the book's spine. Then he seemed to push the rest of his face into the book as well. Fluttershy watched, half-expecting his head to break through the book's spine, but the book didn't even bow outward. Discord kept pressing his face against the book until his whole head, horn, antler and all, had vanished between the book's first page and its front cover. Then he curved his neck over so that the book's cover was parallel with the floor and slid his thumb back over the book's pages, causing them to fan down toward the front cover. When the last page had fallen, he slammed the book shut, turned the book so that it was upright, opened the back cover, and pulled his head back out of the book.

"Nothing in there either, except some spilled apple juice on one of the pages, and some apple pie crumbs between some of the others."

* * *

They continued looking through the books, Fluttershy doing it the old fashioned way, and Discord alternating between that and his shove-his-head-in-the-book method depending on whether the books were hoof-written or typed, but neither found anything particularly interesting. Most of the books were just accounts of food and cider orders, customer lists, or shopping lists.

Finally Discord tugged down the last book, a particularly large one, and as he did, something small and thin that had been shoved under that book fell off the shelf onto the floor. Both Discord and Fluttershy looked down to see what appeared to be a small journal. They exchanged glances before Discord set the large book down and picked up the journal. He opened it and Fluttershy, after a brief hesitation, flew over to look over his shoulder. At the sight of the journal's contents, Fluttershy felt herself sag with a mixture of relief and disappointment. There were only a few entries in the journal and they seemed to consist entirely of shopping and catering lists, mostly of items that involved apples in some way. When they'd finished looking through the journal, Fluttershy expected Discord to toss it as he had the other but instead he flipped back to the last entry.

"Look at this," he said tapping the last list with a talon. "All the lists in here have something apple-related on them except this one."

It was a short list, just six items which he proceeded to read aloud: "strawberry swirl, triple treat, sunny daze, cotton candy, sparkleworks, glitter glide."

"Glitter glide..." Fluttershy repeated softly, and Discord's eyes flicked to her.

"Those words mean anything to you?"

"I...I don't know... There's something familiar about them... like I've heard them somewhere before... but I can't place where." She frowned and looked up at the ceiling as if the answer might be up there.

Discord got up and went back to the large book he'd set down, while Fluttershy began to pace, muttering "Glitter glide, glitter glide, glitter glide," hoping it might jog her memory. Glancing back over at Discord she saw that he once again had his head literally buried in another book. Halting in her pacing, she took a good long look at his tattoos. Maybe it was just because she'd spent so much of her recent time looking for patterns, but now she noticed one thing about the tattoos that she'd always missed before.

The dragon, the wasps, the spirals, the barbed loops, and all the other designs all had a harsh jaggedness to them. The way they twisted over their hodge-podge canvas seemed to snarl "Back off!" Their style looked as if it would have been more at home on the body of a sullen brooding pony, rather than on someone with the careless cheerful attitude Discord usually seemed to display. Then again, the draconequus's whole anatomy seemed to be a jumble of contrasting parts so maybe the fact that the tattoos seemed a bit out of place was intentional.

Still as she continued to study the tattoos, their sharp designs suddenly brought to mind the quills of an injured porcupine she'd cared for a few years back. When she'd first approached it, the wounded creature had been frightened and had lashed out at her in self-defense. It had tried to smack her with its quill-covered tail at least a dozen times before she was finally able to calm it down enough to treat its injuries. Even after it had finally learned to trust her, the porcupine had remained suspicious of any of the other animals and would bristle up any time any of them approached it.

Could Discord's tattoos and piercings be intended as a sort of armor the way that porcupine's quills had? A more subtle way of saying "Don't touch me or you'll get hurt"?

Then Discord began pulling his head back out of the book and Fluttershy made a mental note to keep her musings on his appearance to herself. She didn't think he'd appreciate being compared to one of her animals.

As his head came up, Discord arched his back and iridescent rainbows glinted in the ink of his dragon tattoo. At the sight of those rainbows, Fluttershy suddenly realized why the words glitter glide had seemed familiar to her. She remembered years ago when she was still a filly in Cloudsdale, watching Rainbow Dash zipping through the air. Suddenly the blue pegasus was joined by a light green one whose mane and tail were streaked in pink, purple, and white. Glitter Glide had been every bit as athletic and competitive as Rainbow Dash, and the two had often raced each other through obstacle courses. They'd never been able to determine who was the better athlete, because while Rainbow Dash was the faster of the two, Glitter Glide had been the more agile. Now that she thought about it, she couldn't remember the last time over the past years that Rainbow Dash had even mentioned Glitter Glide. Had they had some sort of falling out?

"Discord, I just remembered where I've heard of Glitter Glide before. She was a friend of my friend Rainbow Dash."

"But not of yours?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, we weren't really enemies or anything like that, but she was really more Rainbow Dash's friend than mine." She looked down at the list. "If she's the same Glitter Glide as is on this list, maybe the rest of the items are actually pony names as well."

Discord just stood there, frowning as if watching something on an invisible screen before saying, "Cotton Candy was in that list of cider customers, page 12. Glitter Glide was on page 23. Sparkleworks, Strawberry Swirl, and Sunny Daze were on page 47. And Triple Treat was on page 53."

Fluttershy snatched up the book and flipped to the pages he'd mentioned. Sure enough there were the names, just where he'd said they'd be. How could he know exactly where they'd be if he had only glanced at the pages earlier? Unless...

"Discord... do you have a photographic memory?"

Discord grinned. "Oh no, I've got the next step up, a cinematic memory."

"A cinematic memory? I've never heard of that before. What's it like?"

Discord scooped her up and they were surrounded by a flash of light. When it disappeared they were back in the cabin. The Apple Family tree was still covering the ceiling, and her bed was still underneath it... but why could she see herself and Discord sitting on the bed and having the same conversation they'd had earlier that day?

"This is how a cinematic memory works," Discord's voice came from behind her. "Your choice of moving, still shot, color, black-and-white, with or without subtitles, various soundtracks, 2-D, 3-D, surround sound, and high definition." There was a second flash of light and they were back in Applejack's room again.

"Wow. That was incredible," Fluttershy said softly and a smile tugged up the corners of Discord's mouth as he felt a rush of pleasure similar to the one he'd had when she'd thanked him for making the Apple Family tree.

"Can you remember everything like that?" Fluttershy asked as he set her down.

"Most things."

"I wish I could do that," Fluttershy said enviously before she could stop herself. She covered her mouth and blushed.

Discord's smile wilted a bit. "Sometimes it's not as great as you might think. For one thing, it doesn't record on command. It's usually on but every once in a while it shuts off for a bit." He lowered himself into a sitting position, hands dangling over his knees. "Also it didn't really come with a rewind/erase button. Once a memory is recorded in there I can recall every little detail of it with perfect clarity." Looking away from her, he murmured more to himself than to her. "And there are some memories in there I'd prefer to forget."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Fluttershy asked, putting a hoof on his knee, near where his paw rested. "You don't have to if you don't want to. But if you do…" She trailed off as his fingers rose. They came back down as if he intended to drum them on his knee, but instead they came down on her hoof and absently spread over it. Discord didn't seem fully aware of what he was doing and she wondered if one of those memories was playing through his head right now. She gaze his paw a light squeeze and he absently returned the gesture. Then he suddenly seemed to notice what he was doing and jerked his paw out of her grasp.

"It's getting late. We should probably get back to the cabin." He scooped her up again and flashed them back to the cabin. "You-ready-for-bed?-You should-be-in-bed.-Let's-get-you-to-bed.-Goodnight," he said in one long breath as he set her in her bed and almost threw the covers over her.

"Discord, wait!" Her hooves wrapped around his wrists and, while he could have flashed himself out of her grasp, something in her voice made him halt. "Discord, what's wrong?"

"Nothing!" he snapped. Then his dragon tattoo slid its head over between his shoulder blades and sneezed a stream of orange-and-yellow ink down his back. He brought his tail up to wipe the ink away with its tufted end, only to have the ink cause the tuft to catch on fire. Fluttershy gasped but Discord just looked annoyed as he waved his tail rapidly back and forth to put the flames out.

_Traitor,_ he mentally snarled at the dragon tattoo, willing it not to move anymore. He blew on the soot-blackened tip of his tail and a fresh white tuft puffed out of it. He started to step back from the bed again only to feel Fluttershy's hooves still clutching his wrists.

"Nothing's wrong," he said, preparing to twist his arms out of her grasp.

"Discord, I want to talk about the case."

"Oh." _Yes, yes, the case. Murder, death, mystery...all that nice stuff...yes, let's think about that._

He seemed to relax and Fluttershy let go of his wrists.

"I'm wondering," she said. "about those names Applejack had written down in her journal. They weren't in any of the other books as ponies she'd catered to. They were only in cider customer list. Why would she pick those particular ponies out of all the ones in the cider list?"

"I noticed that as well," said Discord, stroking his beard and looking up at the ceiling.

"The only one I really know anything about is Glitter Glide and I haven't heard anything from her in years. All I can think of as to why Applejack might write her name down is because she and Rainbow Dash were planning to have a three-way competition with Glitter Glide."

"Tell you what," said Discord. "Tomorrow, I'll go out and check the registries to find out where those six ponies are now and what they're up to."

"Should I go with you to help you look?"

He shook his head. "A lot of those registries weren't built when I was here last so I'd be teleporting into new places. If I ended up teleporting half into a wall or something by mistake, I'd be able to survive it; you wouldn't."

* * *

Later that night, Fluttershy was in her bedroom, lying in the bed Discord had teleported back there for her. She was just dropping off to sleep when she heard the door creak softly open. She shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep as she heard Discord move across the room to stand beside the bed.

For several seconds, he just stood there. Then she felt the mattress go down in four places, two at the foot of the bed, and two on either side of her head. She was lying on her side, and she felt a soft breath on her cheek. Discord must be standing on the bed, bracing himself on his arms above her. Not sure what else to do, she continued pretending to be asleep, while he stood silently over her.

"What are you doing to me, Fluttershy?" he finally asked softly, and before she could decide whether or not to sit up and confront him, a flash of light turned the insides of her eyelids a bright red and he was gone, leaving her to muse not only on what she'd learned about the case, but also on what she'd learned about her partner.

* * *

**Regarding magic: I don't know if that's how Discord's magic really works I'm just making it up that way for the story.**

**Regarding Fluttershy's tail: I got that idea from **_**The Black Stallion's Filly **_**and decided to include it because it amused me. Sometimes I have an oddball sense of humor.**

**Regarding immortality: I've heard a lot of fans say that Discord's immortal but I don't remember that ever being mentioned anywhere in the cartoon. Now to be fair my MLP experience is limited pretty much to the episodes I've seen and a couple pieces of fanfiction I've read so maybe I missed some official source that confirms whether or not Discord is immortal. If any of you can point me in the direction of such a source, please do. But in the meantime, since I don't know if he is or not, I thought it might be interesting to have a story where he doesn't know for sure either. I mean if you think about it how does one even know that sort of thing for sure? *shrugs* (For me maybe it's just a case of what I think of as "Three Wise Men Syndrome." Translation: you see three wise men in all the nativity sets, but if you actually read Matthew where it mentions the wise men it doesn't really say how many there were. Three gifts are mentioned, but nothing about how many wise men there were to give them. It could be anywhere from two to a dozen for all we know.)**

**Regarding clues: When it comes to mystery-writing, I'll be the first to admit I'm no Agatha Christie, so some of my clue planting over the next couple of chapters might be a little clumsy and I apologize in advance for that. Oh, well. Live and learn. (When this story's finished I might go back and do some re-editing just to tighten it up places and maybe publish the re-edited version as a separate story, I'm not sure yet.)**


End file.
